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Rating:
The music of Nucleus is undoubtedly among the most refined expressions of rock in the '70s.
Conceived, formed, and led by the intellectual mind of Ian Carr, a trumpeter, they belong to the circle of groups orbiting around the so-called “Canterbury Scene”: an English musical movement of the '70s primarily aimed at avant-garde progressive rock (Soft Machine, Matching Mole) with a harder matrix (Colosseum), yet extended to embrace even purely jazz or psychedelic influences.
Nucleus falls into this latter category, with their genre being defined as progressive jazz-rock. Their discography spans two decades, starting in 1970 with the album “Elastic Rock,” which progresses and elevates in level for about three years, up to “Labyrinth” in '73. Subsequently, the execution quality remains excellent, but the element of innovation, continuous experimentation, the very essence of prog-rock, diminishes. Although “Belladonna” is more to be considered an album by Ian Carr himself, it remains probably the highest peak reached by the group, considering also the prestige of the lineup featuring, among others alongside Carr, Allan Holdsworth on guitar.
It is an album with soft atmospheres, at times almost ambient, suitable for listening on a cold rainy day, in an armchair, with a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, in perfect British Oldstyle. The music features blues and jazz rhythms in most tracks, with the major expressions of technique in the pieces “Mayday” and “Hector’s House”; there are psychedelic passages, although very sparse, especially in the first track “Belladonna”; as for improvisation, it's a separate chapter: we are in the presence of jazz giants, and the long solos of guitar, sax, piano, and trumpet are the core of all compositions. The most prominent tracks in my opinion are “Remadione” and the aforementioned “Mayday” and “Hector’s House”: gems of clear beauty, containing both astonishing demonstrations of technical execution and distinctive compositional originality.
Elevated music, destined for an elevated and highly selected listening audience. “Belladonna” is a torrent of notes that alternately bursts rapid and vibrant or reflective, graceful, and sophisticated; however, it is wrong and reductive to try to define it with the power of logos, with rationality and logic, as it goes against the irrational purpose of this supreme art.
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