ELASTIC ROCK

Nucleus was a British jazz-rock outfit formed around composer/trumpet player Ian Carr and 5 other jazz musicians. All of them had known each other and played together in various line-ups before they united under the Nucleus banner, with one common purpose: to create a kind of music that was both as fluent and lyrical as 60s jazz music, and as energetic and urgent as the psychedelic rock music of the age. The title of their debut could not be better chosen.

The band's most obvious sources of inspiration were Zappa's Hot Rats, the jazzier side of Soft Machine's THird and especially Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. But Elastic Rock is less improvisational then those albums, and instead the band focuses more on compositions with spontaneous musical interaction. Elastic Rock can stand proudly next to the great names; it's probably less inventive but it offers songs full of emotion and melody, with very intuitive interplay and with musicianship that is very proficient but also very focused and never an end in itself. I could go on and marvel at the creative contribution of each musician here but I'll leave that for a future Nucleus review.

Elastic Rock is probably the most jazzy of all Nucleus 70s albums, but it's got more then enough hooks and energy to be appealing to rock and jazz-rock fans alike. One of my favorite titles from a band that I consider to be one of the best in their field.