Wibbly wobbly wonders

Interviews are frequently re-scheduled for every reason under the sun, but Nick Flanglen from Lemon Jelly has a perfectly plausible (and painful) explanation. "I broke my leg in a motorcycle accident three years ago," he reveals. "I had a whole bunch of operations. Thankfully, I’ve just had the last one, so I’ll be able to go through the security checks at airports without setting off all their alarms. Its back to being a non-bionic man!"

Occasional keyboardist with Pulp and the Primals, together with his partner in wibbly wobbly sounds, DJ Fred Deakin (who is also a designer in The Face), Flanglen has helped fashion some of the weirder and more interesting sounds to get lumped into all that chill-out nonsense. Lemon Jelly.KY was an album of sorts, but effectively a compilation of three EPs. Now, first album proper Lost Horizons has finally reached our stereos.

"It was harder work than expected," Nick reveals. "Not like going down a mine hard work, but it was a bigger thing than we took on before. When we did the EPs, we were working part time on it. From October 2001, we thought it was always two weeks away from being finished. The record company would ring up and ask how it was going, and we’d say ‘Really well. About two more weeks and it’ll be done.’ They’ll ring up again and it’ll be ‘it’ll be two weeks and then it’s off.’ It was like having the builders in. They say two weeks and four months later, they’re still there!"

Part of the reason for the delay was due to their unpredictable working methods.

"We’d start out with a simple idea - a synth or a drum beat or something," Nick explains. "We’d think it was a bit Latino and think we’ll do something in a Latino tip, but twenty minutes later it would be some sort of rock opera. Half an hour later it would have bits of banging techno and then it would have gone punk. It’s really amusing to look back at old versions of these tracks."

Why the restlessness?

"We’ve got very short attention spans and we get very bored repeating ourselves or going through the same processes," he continues. "If something feels like a track we’ve done before, we’ll just turf it out. The God of Jelly smiles at you when the God of Jelly smiles, you can’t force it."