’69 – ’95 – Lemon Jelly
I must have first heard of Lemon Jelly when I was living in Huskisson Street in Liverpool, so that must have been about 1999-2000. I most certainly had some of their other albums on my battered old Creative Jukebox 2 and that died when I worked at Liverpool University.
Anyway, in this, the first of several Lemon Jelly albums that I “own”, the artists have used samples from their own record collection to piece together a tidy package of eclectic and eccentric electronica. The first track launches us into a rousing maelstrom of sound that whips us back in time style wise. At times the thumping beats can be a bit exhausting but the album maintains a consistent form. By the middle track ’79 The Shouty Track the listener is cheekily reminded of their time travel through the archives by a heavily Doctor Who influenced track. Curiously, I actually have a mix of the same track where the creator has mixed in the Doctor Who theme which works really well. Then further in, we reach a track where William Shatner does his “talking” to great effect. I understand that in return for this favour, Lemon Jelly provided some of the music for Shatner’s Has Been.
If, like me, you like variety in your modern music then you might like this album. For me, it’s a grower. It used to be my least favourite Lemon Jelly album, but continued listening has made it act like a dose of thrush which has spread across my musical taste buds. Even so, I couldn’t listen to it every day. Maybe occasionally.
Stegzy's Music Project 
Lemon Jelly.ky – Lemon Jelly [#670]
by stegzyLong time readers will recall the very first album write up in the project being Lemon Jelly’s ‘64-‘95 and how much has changed since then, musically, globally and culturally. Just listening to this, their first album released in 2000, brings back memories of an almost alien world- no social media as such, no 9-11 paranoia, no politically induced panic attacks and no mediascape flooded with copycats.
I say that about the copycats because around the time of release, former acquaintance Ray Pulling (Hi if you’re reading this) and I often tried to mix up similar sounds using his eclectic sound production “suite” and either my Amiga1200 or a PC – whatever was working/more portable at the time and situation – in which ever location we could be bothered to set up/be in.
But of course we never released anything, instead idled the time away chatting shit and eventually fell out over conflicting morality issues. So when Lemon Jelly started putting out much better finely polished stuff it was easier to just consume that than fart about in Qbase or whatever free sampling software came with that month’s PC Format magazine.
The album is itself highly regarded and is borrowed from stylistically by later and contemporary artists such as Bent , Zero 7 and Twofish and again, a reminder of something awesome British culture used to produce before lazy saccharinly insipid industry approved AI driven cookie cutter “culture by numbers” ruined it for everyone.
You can listen to the album on:
Amazon
Youtube Music
Apple Music
Spottyarse
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2000 Lemon Jelly