Ian Carr's Nucleus

The Ian Carr and Nucleus parade of reissues keeps rolling out of the gate on BGO Records, and this two CD compilation of the albums Labyrinth and Roots is solid jazz fusion from the golden year of 1973. Labyrinth was created to be somewhat of a concept album, an instrumental masterpiece telling the story of the Greek mythological character the Minotaur. With such a serious and heavy topic, Ian Carr needed to compose some equally dense music, and with virtually the same line-up as on the bands previous album Belladonna, the results are staggering. For the album Roots, Nucleus was stripped down to just eight members, and the purpose was to come up with a more personal sound, hence the whole band took a more active approach in the songwriting. The results are looser and more earthy than the previous releases.

This stunning 2 CD set features the 1975 Nucleus album Alleycat and the 1976 compilation Direct Hits. Alleycat sees the British fusion ensemble getting downright funky and rocking, keeping pace quite well with other popular groups of the time such as Miles Davis, Return to Forever, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, and the Tony Williams Lifetime. Ian Carr (trumpet/flugelhorn/synthesizer) and his band included on this album Bob Bertles on sax & flute, Ken Shaw on guitar, Geoff Castle on keyboards & Moog, Roger Sutton on bass, and Roger Sellers on drums-together they make a formidable line-up that delivers on all levels.
Direct Hits pulls together songs from various Nucleus albums released between 1970-1974…

Ian Carr and Nucleus were one of the more popular of the early 70's British jazz-fusion pioneers. BGO Records has been re-releasing the back catalog of this fine band as 2CD sets, inluding extensive liner notes, photographs, and two full albums worth of music.
The aggressive trumpet of Carr leads the way on most of these jazzy yet rocking songs. Carr and Miles Davis seemed to blaze similar paths in the late 60's and into the 70's, utilizing a large band approach that included lots of spacey jams that evoked rock firepower, free form jazz, and psychedelic atmosphere. Solar Plexus has a very strong Chicago meets Return to Forever feel, as the horns are way upfront, with the keyboards, guitar, bass and drums providing a rock solid foundation…

Ian Carr records have long been difficult to find in the U.S., but tend to be worth the search. At the time that this LP was recorded, Carr was leading a quintet called Nucleus and was very much under the influence of fusion-era Miles Davis. With Brian Smith adding some capable tenor and soprano, the keyboards of Geoff Castle, electric bassist Bill Kristian and drummer Roger Sellers, Carr performs four lengthy group originals, including the 16-minute title cut. The dated music sometimes rambles, but does include some worthy trumpet solos and interesting vamps.

The 1974 and 1975 releases from British jazz-fusion outfit Nucleus has just been released on the fine BGO Records as a 2 CD set, chock full of liner notes and line-up information. Both of these albums saw Ian Carr and Nuclues taking on a more funk/rock fusion slant, and while there is still a lot of jazzy tones here, the music is more electrified and filled with more grooves than previous offerings.
The presence of electric piano and Moog synthesizer play a huge role on both these albums, courtesy of Gordon Beck, Geoff Castle, and Carr himself. In addition, lots of wah-wah guitar licks from Ken Shaw and Jocelyn Pitchen permeate the mix, as well as throbbing bass lines from Roger Sutton, all of which can be heard from the opening moments of the song "In Procession" from Under the Sun…

If Soft Machine was a rock group that veered towards jazz rock, Nucleus can be seen as a jazz group that veered towards jazz rock, as most musicians were clearly jazz musicians with the notable exception of Chris Spedding (yes, Mr. motocycle-punk/Chameleon-man of rock). If a comparison of those two groups can be made, it is also obvious that Nucleus became a nursing ground for those musicians before joining Soft Machine (around ten musicians did the transfer). They were signed on the famous progressive Vertigo label and the first two superb artwork album sleeves were designed by Roger Dean.
Nucleus was trumpet player (and confirmed jazzmen and biographist) Ian Carr's project and the its discography is rather confusing with the different designations as some were called "Ian Carr's Nucleus", "Nucleus With Ian Carr"…

"Out Of The Long Dark" is the last album of the second full- fledged stable lie-up Nucleus group (one that had started with Under The Sun) and we're still finding keyboardist Geoff Castle and drummer Roger Sellers, and returning to the fold, woodwind player Brian Smith. Only bassist Billy Kristian is new, replacing the usual Sutton.
"Old Heartland" was only the second album under his own name proper (no link with Nucleus) after 1971's Belladonna, but if his first try was much in the group's soundscapes, "Old Heartland" steps away from it. The album is broken down in two parts, the Third Stream suite and the shorter tracks on the flipside, which still features some Nucleus pillars like Geoff Castle and John Marshall and has Colosseum's Hiseman engineering it on the Abbey Road studios.

Nucleus were a pioneering jazz-rock band from Britain who continued in different forms from 1969 to 1989. They were led by Ian Carr, who had been in the Rendell–Carr Quintet during the mid and late 1960s, and was a respected figure in British jazz for more than forty years. Their jazz-based music evolved from an early sound incorporating elements of progressive and psychedelic rock toward combination with a funkier sound in the mid and late 1970s. Elastic Rock is Nucleus' first album. Recorded in January 1970, it was a pioneering work in emerging genre of jazz-rock fusion.

The result of a productive continuing partnership between Cuneiform Records and Radio Bremen, this double-CD captures a 1971 concert by the Nucleus sextet, led by Ian Carr on trumpet and flügelhorn, and also featuring Karl Jenkins on Hohner electric piano and oboe, Brian Smith on saxophones and flute, Ray Russell on electric guitar, Roy Babbington on bass, and John Marshall on drums. Nucleus was first formed by Carr in late 1969, and the group took first prize at a Montreux Festival competition in 1970, positively blowing away the competition (which included the very best of contemporary European jazz bands). Their prize was an appearance at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival three weeks later, where they were reportedly very well-received…

Mike Dixon, of the record label Major League Productions (MLP), by his own admission doesn't know much about jazz, but he does know what he likes. This recording - spanning over 100 minutes of a recorded-for-radio Nucleus concert at Britain's Loughborough University in February 1976, and acquired by MLP as a "saved from the skip" job - is a perfect example of Dixon's excellent acumen. Amazingly, the recording's sound has not been impaired one iota despite the thirty year hiatus. Wisely, MLP decided not to cut any of the original playing time and the album is thus the first double CD to be produced by the company. It's a brave move for a small and relatively new record label which hitherto has specialised in prog-rock. On hearing the CD for the first time, the Nucleus enthusiast's high expectations will be more than realised. This is the mid-period band at the top of their game…