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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 16. September 8th 1971

Nucleus: We'll Talk about it later

Nucleus: We'll Talk about it later.

In an effort to categorise musical groups one writer has described the music of Nucleus as "jazz-blues with strong rock overtones" whatever that means. All I can say is that the group play a type of free-form yet specialised music which can be described to my satisfaction as "mature". Nucleus is an incredibly talented and tight knit instrumental group and their second LP amply shows this.

Their music however, suffers from much of a sameness, to such an extent that it is hard to distinguish between individual tracks by the time that you have heard it a few times. The musical construction is almost always the same with a free form mixture of drums, guitars and brass, producing music that sort of evolves along, so much so, that one can't quite anticipate what is going to happen on a particular track.

Their music is specialised and I would imagine that it would only attract a narrow band of listeners, (in spite of this statement - their first LP Elastic Rock sold out completely within weeks of its release) Nucleus on this LP consists of Ian Carr, Karl Jenkins, a New Zealander called Brian Smith, Jeff Clyne, John Marshall and Chris Spedding.

Ballad of Joe Pimp is one of the vocal tracks on the LP but I find that the dominating factors are the instruments which make this tune really much the same as all other tracks. Ian Carr says, "For me the test of any band is how much I enjoy listening to it when I'm not playing. With Nucleus I get into a state approaching ecstasy" - I wouldn't go that far but I do admit a partial liking of this LP and acknowledge that this record houses many very talented musicians.