Jefferson Belt, Table Manners (Round Trip Mars)

All I know about this warm, user-friendly and hypnotically amusing album is that Mr Belt (if we believe that is his name) was a member of the Auckland band Sperm Bank 5 whose name, but not noise, I remember from over a decade ago.

Some of his subsequent instrumental work appeared on a Kog compilation and . . .

Well, that's where my (supplied) information runs out.

Ignorance however doesn't change the fact that these instrumentals (with odd wee conversational snippets peppered between tracks) are like soundtracks to kitsch early-70s movies about spies and space rockets, dreamy sea cruises lubricated by fruit-filled cocktails, lazy afternoons in a lounge bar on Saturn, a wedding in the 60s when your drunk and sentimental uncle commandeers the organ . . .

Yes, this is that indescribable and cleverly crafted good fun. Guilty pleasures abound and it works just as well on a cool evening as a balmy Sunday.

Right up there with Lemon Jelly's classic relaxo-journey Lost Horizons. Loving this.