‘64-’95

By their record collections ye shall know them. The third album from Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen,’64-’95 is a selection of aural germ cultures grown from swabs found in the duo’s sound library, sources as unlikely and varied as Masters Of Reality, The Scars and Lee Hazelwood.

Me, I’ll stick with the originals. Lemon Jelly specialise in surfaces so smooth and digitalised, it’s hard to find a purchase point. Not that coldness can’t be soulful (as in the magic paradoxes of Aphex Twin or Kraftwerk or Kid A), but’64-’95 is as clinical as the title, frequently flirting with 21st century hotel foyer music. In other words, Play without the Lomax factor. Tracks like ‘Make Things Right’ or ‘Come Down On Me’ are far from artless – in fact they’re faultlessly constructed – but their scrubbed and buffed facades are devoid of darkness, mystery, history, shadows, decay… all the interesting stuff. From Blade Runner to Neuromancer, techno-utopian vision thangs require a filigree of grime; otherwise they become abstractions that can’t live outside the parameters of their own self-imposed vacuum. The most intoxicating music possesses at least the illusion of tactility, be it buzzing strings, humming sequencers, throbbing valves, vocal timbre or stressed-out printed circuits. Lemon Jelly on the other hand, exist trapped under glass in an over-lit anteroom, and we can only admire them at an academic remove, all the time gnawed by a vague sense of disconnection and malnourishment.

That said, the sounds are perfectly mirrored by Airside’s accompanying graphics on the DVD. But this feels like the work of lab rats rather than aesthetes – and an artist with no set of aesthetic criteria is no artist at all, but a technician. ’64-’95 is coffee table without the coffee, art deco without the art. Great records should play havoc with the digestion; this tastes like chicken.