Lemon Jelly
Nick Franglen (left) and Fred Deakin, in a promotional image designed by Airside.
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genre(s)	Downbeat, Trip Hop, BrainDance, IDM, Electronic Music, Electronica
Years active	1998 - present
Label(s)	XL Recordings
Website	http://www.lemonjelly.ky/
Members
Fred Deakin Nick Franglen

Lemon Jelly is a British electronica duo consisting of Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin.

Music

Franglen and Deakin initially released three limited-circulation EPs, The Bath (1998), The Yellow (1999), and The Midnight (2000), which were then collected into a widely-released album in 2000, Lemonjelly.KY, which was both a critical and a commercial success. Their second album (and self-proclaimed first studio album), Lost Horizons, was released in 2002, and was another success. The album featured the singles "Space Walk" and "Nice Weather For Ducks" and was nominated for the 2003 Mercury Music Prize and a BRIT Award for the now defunct "Best Dance Act" category in 2004.

Their most recent album, 2005's '64 - '95, shows a harder and more complex sound than previous releases. The title comes from the fact that each track features a single sample drawn from years between 1964 and 1995, incorporating each sample in a variety of imaginative ways. It contains a track featuring a vocal performance by William Shatner, with whom they collaborated for a track on his album Has Been. The album, available on both CD and vinyl, was complemented by the release of a DVD under the same title, with each of the album's audio tracks companied with colourful visuals executed mostly in 2D and 3D animation. Some of these visuals are progressive and would work as stand-alone music videos, while others are more repetitious, ever-changing variations of a given visual theme. The audio on the DVD is available as both standard stereo as well as 5.1 surround sound. The visuals were created by the Airside design studios.

Live performances

Lemon Jelly are known for their imaginative live performances. In 2003, Lemon Jelly performed a number of concerts around the UK. Instead of having a support act, Fred and Nick organised a giant game of Bingo, presided over by Death and played by many members of the audience.[1] In other shows, support was provided by Don Partridge - a traditional one man band - whilst "Jelly Helpers" distributed sweets to the crowd. They also played a Saturday Morning gig named "Jelly Tots" as a charitable event for children. In between sets, classic British children's cartoons were played over a projection screen, and the event featured bouncy castles, clowns and hundreds of balloons. They have developed an exciting live show, performing headlining sets at Glastonbury Festival, V Festival, Reading Festival and The Big Chill amongst others.

Lemon Jelly in media

A number of their tracks have been used by the BBC for trailers and incidental music, including "Nice Weather for Ducks", featuring an impersonation of John Langstaff, who later founded Revels in the U.S., "Ramblin' Man" and "The Shouty Track". Other television programmes have also used their music, such as "The Staunton Lick" being used during the final scene of sitcom Spaced. They have also been heard on other television advert campaigns. Most notably, music from In the Bath was used on Motorola's earlier "Hello Moto" adverts, with newly recorded voices recorded over Lemon Jelly's original track. Recently, "The Curse of Ka'Zar" was used in Turner Classic Movies' 31 Days of Oscar advertisements, played in a montage (occasionally aired with alternative music by Imogen Heap) used for filler and in information about the film about to air prior to its actual airing.

Airside

They are unusual in having a highly distinctive visual style for their packaging, stemming from their work with Fred's Airside design studios. The bright colours and graphic elements, together with the Lemon Jelly typeface, are instantly recognisable as the Lemon Jelly "brand". Their first three EPs were released on 10" vinyl in hand screenprinted sleeves and now trade on eBay for large sums of money. Other interesting sleeves included Soft/Rock, an unofficial release which was pressed on pale blue 7" vinyl in a denim sleeve. Another unofficial release, Rolled/Oats was pressed as a gold picture disc in a hessian bag.

Other projects

In late 2005, Franglen did remixes of Coldcut's "Man In A Garage", and of the original The Sims 2 and its expansion packThe Sims 2: University Buy/Build Mode Soundtracks for another expansion pack for The Sims 2; The Sims 2 Nightlife. It is currently unknown if a new album is in production or the duo are moving on to other projects, though Franglen produced Badly Drawn Boy's 2006 studio album Born in the U.K..

Discography

Albums