Lemon Jelly are the band that have come the closest to breaking the seemingly impenetrable barrier that stands between left-field electronic music and mainstream success.
Although ‘left-field’ and ‘mainstream’ may seem like mutually exclusive terms, the London born duo almost caused a lexical fissure in 2003 and 2004 with Mercury and then Brit nominations for second album Lost Horizons. Despite output thinning and a slight decrease in national recognition, the band remain firmly imbedded in the hearts and iPods of a surprising number of discerning listeners.
Without meaning to sound wide-eyed and furiously over-enthusiastic, it is impossible to listen to Lemon Jelly without feeling joyous and unrestrained. Consisting of Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin, the band create enthralling soundscapes that conjure up images of hyper-real, technicolour worlds whilst simultaneously grounding the listener with pulsating beats and refrains. In the duration of roughly two average pop-songs, Lemon Jelly edge towards climax, piling layer upon layer from the ground up and spinning emotionally raw narratives from start to finish. It is under this firmament of coloured brilliance and adoration that I got the chance to talk to Nick about Lemon Jelly and his instillation work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHgkMSbnl0o
Broadly speaking, Lemon Jelly’s lyrical work seems to take one of two forms. The first is most prevalent on Lost Horizons and manifests itself as snippets of short-story oratory, songs such as ‘Space Walk’ guiding the listener through an ethereally structured journey. The second is a style more familiar to the genre and has instrumentation take up the majority of the work as catchy refrains lay dotted over the top. “Vocals and speech often start as samples we’ve uncovered some place – a record, an old TV programme, anywhere. Sometimes that’s the end of it and we’ll just use them in the track as they are, but other times we’ll use the sampled speech as a starting point for a bigger idea, that we’ll write and record it with someone perfect: it could be a voice artist, an actor, a friend or that guy we’ve just met. There’s no real formula to it, it just has to feel right.”
One such bigger idea is ‘Ramblin’ Man’, a seven-minute journey seen through the eyes of a fleet-footed, deep voiced adventurer, the song is a simplistic ode to travelling and the power of lists. On behalf of my friend Stevie, I ask whether the vocalist is Geoffrey Rush. “Hi Stevie. No it’s not – and it’s an illustration of taking a sampled idea and expanding on it. Originally it was a bit of Errol Flynn talking we’d found, but he only mentioned four places he’d rambled to and that simply wouldn’t do. Oh nonono. That’s not a ramble, that’s a stroll. So we got in touch with the magnificent Sir John Standing and gave him a list of over 200 places. That became the backbone of the track. John is a great man and certainly brought his life experience to the process.”
Whilst it is refreshing to speak to an artist unmoved by the tortures of the creative process, it is hard to believe song writing of this kind is unwaveringly positive. 200 places need to be adjusted for pitch and pace, fit smoothly within the rhythmical narrative and rest over an unconventional beat. If nothing else, this must take time. “How long it takes really varies. Sometimes you can feel something’s going on that is worth pursuing, but it takes ages until you find out what it’s about. At other times everything just slots into place immediately. ‘Soft’ took 4 hours from start to finish, but that was really unusual. Most of the tracks on Lost Horizons and 64-95 took several weeks. The tracks I’m writing for a personal project at the moment are taking a similar time, weeks not days – sometimes it takes a while for things to settle into shape. You have a starting point, and it’s a journey to see where it goes. I never have a clue what things are going to sound like at the end.”
Although Nick insists that they “never made conscious decisions about [the tone of tracks]” and that songs would “change key, tonality, speed, essence, everything during the writing process”, there is a reoccurring major key throughout Lemon Jelly’s work. In light of the rarity of upbeat ambient electronic music, the question of influences is pressing. “We were influenced by each other. Fred’s musical experiences were very different to my own, and we approach everything from very different perspectives. Lemon Jelly is a musical world distorted through both our prisms. I’m not listening to very much at the moment as I’m finishing off a very personal musical project of my own. I do that best in a vacuum. It’s less distracting.”
The personal music project in question is being formed alongside a number of instillation art pieces that includes an explorative scuba dive through the wreck of the SS Marga. I ask if there’s a difference in the creative process between the two art forms. “As far as my solo work goes, whether it’s music or installations or whatever, there’s no difference. Something throws up a question out of nowhere, and I go off to live in that world for a while, see what’s going on. Whether I’m working it out with an analog synth or a bag of compost on my shoulders, makes no difference. With the instillations I’ve travelled to New York to investigate the ambience of the Manhattan Bridge. For my current musical project I’ve just come back from spending three days in Riga with the Dalai Lama. What’s not to love?”
Before we finish, I get the chance to ask one final question: What do you do in the bath?
“Play with me duck. Doesn’t everyone?”