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Lemon Jelly is a musical collaboration between Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin. Their musical style could be thought to be somewhere between off-center easy listening and trip-hop. They initially released three limited-circulation EPs, The Bath (1998), The Yellow (1999), and The Midnight (2000), which were then collected into a widely-released album in 2000, Lemonjelly.KY, which was both a critical and a commercial success. Their second album, Lost Horizons, released in 2002, featured the singles "Space Walk" and "Nice Weather For Ducks" and was nominated for the 2003 Mercury Music Prize and the Brit Awards.
Lemon Jelly are known for their imaginative live performances. In 2003, Lemon Jelly performed a number of concerts around the UK. Instead of having a support act, Fred and Nick organised a giant game of Bingo, presided over by Death and played by many members of the audience.* In other shows, support was provided by Don Partridge - a traditional one man band - whilst "Jelly Helpers" distributed sweets to the crowd. They also played a Saturday Morning gig named "Jelly Tots" as a charitable event for children. In between sets, classic British children's cartoons were played over a projection screen, and the event featured bouncy castles, clowns and hundreds of balloons. They have developed an exciting live show, performing headlining sets at Glastonbury Festival, V Festival, Reading Festival and The Big Chill amongst others.
A number of their tracks have been used by the BBC for trailers and incidental music, including Nice Weather for Ducks featuring a nice impersonation of John Langstaff, who later founded Revels in the US, Ramblin' Man and The Shouty Track. Other television programmes have also used their music, such as The Staunton Lick being used during the final scene of sitcom Spaced. They have also been heard on other television advert campaigns. Most notably, music from In The Bath was used on Motorola's earlier "Hello Moto" adverts, with newly recorded voices recorded over Lemon Jelly's original track. Recently, Lemon Jelly's final track on their second CD album Lost Horizons, "The Curse of Ka'Zar," was used in AMC's 30 Days of Oscar advertisements, played in a montage (occasionally aired with alternative music by Imogen Heap) used for filler and in information about the film about to air prior to its actual airing.
They are unusual in having a highly distinctive visual style for their packaging, stemming from their work with Fred's Airside design studios. The bright colours and graphic elements, together with the Lemon Jelly typeface, are instantly recognisable as the Lemon Jelly "brand". Their first 3 EPs were released on 10" vinyl in hand screenprinted sleeves and now trade on eBay for large sums of money. Other interesting sleeves included Soft/Rock, an unofficial release which was pressed on pale blue 7" vinyl in a denim sleeve. The sleeve also contained a fruit or mint flavoured condom. Another unofficial release, Rolled/Oats was pressed on gold vinyl in a hessian bag.
Their latest album is titled '64 - '95, showing a harder and more complex sound than previous releases. The title comes from the fact that each track features a single sample drawn from years between 1964 and 1995, incorporating each sample in a variety of imaginative ways. It contains a track featuring a vocal performance by William Shatner, with whom they collaborated for a track on his album Has Been. It was completed on 21 April 2004 and released in January 2005. The first single off
'64 - '95, available on both CD and vinyl, was complemented by the release of a DVD under the same title. This DVD features an illustrated version of the music album, with each of the album's audio tracks companied with matching visuals executed mostly in 2D and 3D animation. Some of these visuals are progressive and would work as stand-alone music videos, while others are more repetitious, ever-changing variations of a given visual theme. The audio on the DVD is available as both standard stereo as well as 5.1 surround sound. The visuals were created by the Airside design studios.
Discography
Albums
- "Lemonjelly.KY" (2000)
- "Lost Horizons" (2002, #20 UK)
- "'64 - '95" (2005, #17 UK)
Singles and EPs
- "The Bath EP" (1998)
- "The Yellow EP" (1999)
- "The Midnight EP" (2000)
- "Soft/Rock" (2001)
- "Space Walk" (2002, #36 UK)
- "Nice Weather for Ducks" (2003, #16 UK)
- "Rolled/Oats" (2003)
- "Stay With You" (2004, #31 UK)
- "The Shouty Track" (2005, #21 UK)
- "Make Things Right" (2005, #33 UK)
References
- "Lemon Jelly, Forum, London" by Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, March 8, 2003, retrieved July 2, 2006
External links
"Lemon Jelly"