THERE was a time, in another age, another millennium, when electronica was as cold as Siberia: the craft work of Kraftwerk, the tubular chills of Mike Oldfield, the metronome precision of Art Of Noise.

Move forward to Lemon Jelly, once the staple of the children's tea party and now the ambience-chasing sound of life on too many E numbers, life if the Clangers ruled the world and space beyond, life should the Smiley badge become the national flag.

This jolly Jelly is the immaculately detailed lab experimentation of sample minds Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen, a never-photographed duo so low key they put no names, no titles, on the high-concept sleeve. Yet there is one adult sting to their cool breeze of an exuberant, hour-long journey through space and time and its enchanting, mysterious, warm-hearted world of samba rhythms, after-hours jazz, bracing brass, plummy John Standing soundbites, swimming ducks and enraptured astronauts. Amid this panoramic search for the lost horizons of joy and alternative meanings of life, Experiment Number Six sticks a spanner in the works, the field-recording findings of one Doctor William Brook warning of the folly of science for science's sake. Typically, however, next track Closer lifts the spirits as high as the midday sun. Beauty and the beats.

Updated: 10:07 Thursday, January 02, 2003