Lost Horizons

Just before the release of LJ’s debut album lemonjelly.ky – actually a compilation of earlier EPs – there was discord in the British music press over who ‘discovered’ the band first. Everyone wanted a piece of these whimsical men-at-samplers, everyone wanted to (claim to) have known ’em when they were pups, such was the certainty of their musical ascent.

Sure enough the album was brilliant (journalistic hype and hogwash notwithstanding), and set a high standard for the duo’s subsequent output. This standard has been met, wooed and thoroughly deflowered by Lost Horizons, a diagonal slice through the wonky pudding of Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin’s now uncontested musical genius. It’s melodic. It’s chilled out. It’s funny. And they must be in league with Lucifer to have found such killer samples.

‘Elements’ kicks off with a pedagogical recital of same and a sweet vibes line. Eight minutes later the song is just winding up, never having outstayed its welcome. ‘Spacewalk’ recounts the rapture of an astronaut en promenade, over a piano-driven breakbeat. (LJ’s enthusiastic use of acoustic guitar gives this and other tracks an organic flavour which contrasts crisply with the underlying electronica.)

‘Nice Weather For Ducks’ starts with possibly the best sample ever: an inter-war British patriarch chanting the old nursery rhyme, “All the ducks are swimming in the water/Fol-de-rol-the-rol-de.” It proceeds to become a smooth folk-funk workout, dragging some swing brass along for the ride and becoming a hypothetical ’80s soap theme halfway through. Just for larks.

Things get a bit dark on ‘Experiment No. 6,’ an experimental jazz thing which charts the fading vitals of a shady doctor’s test subject. Strange but by no means unpleasant listening. The album never quite recovers its bounciness thereafter, finishing instead with the wonderful ‘The Curse Of Ka’zar,’ another jazz-tinged number which becomes steadily more dreamy.

The ‘Lemon’ part of this act’s name is hard to read meaning into. But ‘Jelly’ describes their music perfectly: amorphous, wobbly, sweet and delicious.