Trumpeter
Ian Carr's
Belladonna was issued in 1972, following three acclaimed Vortex outings by his
Nucleus ensemble -- 1970's
Elastic Rock and
We'll Talk About It Later, and 1971's Solar Plexus. The original
Nucleus had dissolved: multi-instrumentalist
Karl Jenkins and drummer
John Marshall joined
Soft Machine, bassist
Jeff Clyne left for
Isotope, and
Chris Spedding for session work. For
Belladonna, the financially strapped
Carr recruited pianist
Dave MacRae, pre-
Soft Machine bassist
Roy Babbington, drummer
Clive Thacker,
Gordon Beck on Wurlitzer, and percussionist
Trevor Tomkins. The album introduced the masses to future guitar hero
Allan Holdsworth. Reed and wind player Brian Smith was the only remaining
Nucleus member besides
Carr.
Nucleus' previous outings seemingly reveled in the tensions that existed between jazz improvisation and rock's forceful dynamics;
Belladonna, by contrast, fully integrates them. While inspirational blueprints for this album include
Miles Davis' seminal
In a Silent Way, this music deliberately employs more accessible and conventional jazz harmonics and circular time-keeping, despite its abstractions.
The 13-plus-minute title-track opener offers nebulous dissonance from the percussion instruments and wafting sinister tones from a Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes in the intro.
Carr's muted trumpet introduces a call-and-response Eastern modal theme. The band respond sparsely and ambiguously at first, until
Babbington's bassline picks up the theme and guides the band into funky terrain.
Holdsworth vamps and comps with wah-wah pedals while
Beck's and
MacRae's contrasting keyboards offer stellar interplay.
Carr and Smith trade fine solos and
Holdsworth's rhythm playing is wildly inventive. "Summer Rain," by contrast, is laid-back.
MacRae's Rhodes echoes the sound of droplets hammering at windows, as the bassline roves between a shuffling drum kit and syncopated, yet tandem horns as
Holdsworth offers bluesy, psychedelic fills behind the piano. The guitarist gets to flex his still-developing muscles for a few moments on "Remadione." Though it also begins with a gauzily wafting flute, tinkling Rhodes, and tapped cymbals, it kicks in full force with a funky bassline and breakbeat snare as the guitarist starts cutting in with distorted arpeggio blues lines.
Beck and
MacRae respond with empathy and enough sass to urge him on. "Mayday" offers momentary abstraction in its intro as
Carr and Smith deliver a punchy vamp with expressionist backing from keys, drums, and guitar, while
Babbington's physical bassline keeps it grounded. The horns meet
Holdsworth's steely,
Shaft-esque wah-wah pedal with grit and groove. The seer musicality in closer "Hector's House" recalls the example of
Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band as Smith's soprano and
Carr's horn wind around one another with loping harmonies and eventually, canny, interlocking solos that approach swinging post-bop.
Holdsworth cuts loose with an incendiary, fleet solo that melds jazz improv, psych, prog rock, and bluesy hard bop. In sum,
Belladonna isn't merely a fine album, it's a great one.
Carr, in transition and somewhat financially dire straits, remains capable of enthralling listeners with a highly individual concept of jazz-rock fusion that makes no compromises either in quality or creative imagination. ~ Thom Jurek