Irony is all the rage in the clubland. Who hasn’t been to a club where the DJ just can’t stop themselves from splicing the latest and greatest in music with enough cheese to make a lacto-intolerant sufferer sneeze?

At the other end of the scale, you have nights like Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures where the BBC London disc jockey exclusively plays records which others may consider a mite Cheddary. Rowley’s motivation, though, is not to act the wise guy but to show reverence to songs he genuinely loves.

Rowley’s club became a CD of the same name. Merry pranksters Lemon Jelly, comprising DJ/designer Fred Deakin and producer Nick Franglen, seem to be of a similar persuasion. So, where once they sampled Jimmy Page riffs, on ’64 –‘95 they appropriate bits and bobs from Led Zeppelin wannabes Masters of Reality, on opening track ‘’88 AKA Come Down On Me’.

Elsewhere, vocals by New Zealand’s answer to Englebert Humperdinck, John Rowles, appear on '68' AKA Only Time'. The most topical track, however, is ‘’95 Make Things Right’. This lifts aspects of UK R&B fave Terri Walker’s cover version of Monica’s ‘Before You Walk Out Of My Life’. 

The award for most bizarre sample must go to album closer, and oldest borrowed sound, ‘’64 AKA Go’. Here, Deakin and Franglen throw in some William Shatner AKA Star Trek’s Captain Kirk. Four years before he recorded cult classic The Transformed Man featuring spoken-word recordings of ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ and ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.

Lemon Jelly are a pair of latter-day Midases. It doesn’t matter what they touch, be it stuff recorded by The Scars, contemporaries and compatriots of Richard Jobson's punk upstarts The Skids, or the similarly Scottish song writing duo of Gallagher and Lyle, forerunners of Simon and Garfunkel, they turn it to gold. ’64 – ‘95 truly is an album to treasure.
(3½/5)

Release Date: 31 January 2005

---

'64 - '95