Nucleus: We'll Talk About It Later [BE WITH RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

Be With Records brings it back in a die-cut gatefold sleeve. Nucleus won first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970, and Colin Larkin called their first three albums vital in any comprehensive rock or jazz collection.

This edition

• Die-cut gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Ian Carr had spent the mid-60s in the Rendell-Carr Quintet before he formed Nucleus, and by 1970 the band had played both the Newport Jazz Festival and New York's Village Gate. We'll Talk About It Later, their second album, followed Elastic Rock onto Vertigo that same busy year.

Pete King produced, and the band recorded at AIR Studios in London. Carr's trumpet and Karl Jenkins' oboe and keyboards ride over hard-driving rock rhythms, with Chris Spedding's guitar adding bite. "Song for the Bearded Lady" opens with a strut, "Sun Child" and the title track lock into long, funky grooves, "Lullaby for a Lonely Child" offers a breather, and "Oasis," "Ballad of Joe Pimp" and "Easter 1916" carry side two. It's jazz with rock's muscle and rock with jazz's ears, built on long, open-ended grooves that give every soloist room to roam, and it still sounds remarkably fresh.

The band followed it with Solar Plexus in 1971 and kept the name going, in different forms, until 1989. Jenkins later found fame as a composer with Adiemus, so there's a rather distinguished oboe on these grooves.

Also at Kops: more Nucleus on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Vertigo / Be With Records (cat# BEWITH126LP), a reissue of the 1970 album.