NUCLEUS

The overall feeling of the "Nucleus" album is violent, mystical and very emotional. The first track is a quite straightforward rocker, and in my opinion the poorest song on the album (still being quite ok, and one of their favorite live numbers). "Harvest" is then a very powerful schizoid song, with strong contrasts of calmness and disorder, beautifulness and horror, but all this still melting together as a compact, logical song. "Book of Hours" follows with this tendency, but with longer lines. First part of the song titled as "Pendulum Swing" has a nice idea, where the one and same continuous bass line ties together the guitar and mellotron chords, which swing around the central note, and bass also measures the rhythm where the drummer attacks upon. The following song is separated in two different tracks, where "Raft" works as an echoes of a closing-up storm, which is called "Rubankh". It sounds little like the most violent parts of King Crimson's "Fracture". "Here" brings a contrast to the overall aggressiveness of the album, as it is a very mellow and sad ballad (and very good also). "This Far from The Sky" continues the compositional ideas of the first cacophonic tracks, resembling the iconoclastic innovations of Van Der Graaf Generator. But somehow in the end, it doesn't fulfill all the promises which emerged during it, and it's ending seems little pathetic in a bad way. The final track "In Freedom" is a very beautiful song full of hope, and it also works as some kind of "relief chill-outer" after the psychedelic rollercoaster ride of this album. There's an interesting effect in vocals, as the first few phrases are sung by a solo male voice, but after few verses Ann-Sofi's vocals "sneak in" as a second voice. If you listen it casually, one could think there's just some kind of echo added to the vocals.

The only few things that lower this album's status for me are some compositional nuances on "This Far from The Sky" and the title track. And possibly too much listening of this record during the solitary nocturnal hours have also caused some inflation of it for me.

I have also checked out a picture vinyl version of "Nucleus", made by Record Heaven. I was amazed, as the "Raft - Rubankh" coupling is separated into different sides of the LP, breaking the compositional logics. This possibly reveals the state of piety, which was present at Record Heaven as they designed this "special release". There's also a remastered CD-version out with a bonus track "Lunar Surface", but I haven't heard that song myself yet.

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