Torrid Zone: The Vertigo Recordings 1970-1975

Fascinating to revisit Nucleus after a couple of decades since last listening to these albums. I'd bought 4 or 5 of the LPs first time around, the other albums I'd not heard before. I'd recently bought Neil Ardley's Kaleidoscope of Rainbows on CD which made me want to listen to more Nucleus, which is when I stumbled on the reisssue boxset.I find these albums hold up really well even though they were recorded well over 40 years ago. For me, just occasionally they veer into easy listening territory (think 70s' cop show soundtracks), there's the occasional drum solo or male vocal I could do without, but I enjoyed the vast majority of these tracks and discovered some great new Nucleus tracks I'd never heard before (eg the 15 minute Snakehips Dream on Solar Plexis, one of the LPs I'd missed first time around). It was great to hear Labyrinth again, one of the LPs I really enjoyed at the time (with Norma Winstone vocals.)There's no extra tracks, no lost recordings. Packaging is a bit minimal. The CDs are housed in thin card sleeves that you'd associate with newspaper giveaways. The booklet collates info from each album and adds an informative essay. And it's in a small cardboard box.I'd have preferrred to have the 9 LPs on 9 CDs, and you'd have thought the incremental cost to Cherry Red wouldn't be prohibitive, not when they're able to sell this set for 30 quid or so (Amazon started off by asking over 50 quid, which was a bit ambitious - the price eventually dropped to 26.59 in June '19, but it does fluctuate).I was initially concerned whether the 9 LPs had been chopped up sensibly to squeeze them onto the 6 CDs. However where a Nucleus LP is split over 2CDs then side 1 is on the end of one CD, and side 2 on the start of the next, which for me preserves the integrity of the originals (I've bought complete box sets before which butcher the original LPs to minimise the number of CDs).Some very well-known musicians spent time with Nucleus, the only constant being Ian Carr. Amazingly his ability as a band leader means that each incarnation does still sound like Nucleus. I hadn't realised that Karl Jenkins wrote so much of the first album, in fact I hadn't made the connection at the time that so many folks from Nucleus ended up in Soft Machine. (As Philip Barden points out the Tony Levin in Nucleus is a drummer who is now sadly no longer with us, it's not the well-known Tony Levin who plays the stick bass with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel).If like me you still have a few of the original LPs you'll be interested to read in the booklet that some of these are now quite valuable - according to discogs Labyrinth LPs have sold recently for 250+ quid. Which makes the new boxset seem pretty reasonable in comparison.

I had these albums on CD from the 1990s/early 2000s two album sets. They were very good and I love that early Nucleus album, especially and Belladonna, an Ian Carr solo release, is also a favourite. Ian Carr is a really good player, composer and band leader. It is unfortunate that Nucleus was not more highly rewarded for their groundbreaking musical output but then volume of record sales rarely has any correlation with merit.There was always going to be some compromises in this package with nine albums distributed over 7 CDs but the packaging is pretty good and a decent wee booklet. The remastering is pretty good too, the frontline instruments certainly stand out a bit more and, so far as rest of the band is concerned they sound pretty good too. I have seen reviews that complained that there was not enough separation between the other instruments but I tend to disagree. You are verging on creating a whole new album when your remix starts to meddle with the balance of instruments to that extent. Certainly some albums and bands have done that successfully but I think it would be too much here, and quibbling about such details detracts from what we should be doing, which is to celebrate a brilliant band.These are essential albums and if you don’t have them in your music collection then it is not really a music collection.

The early recordings by Nucleus are some of the most important - and enjoyable- in the story of jazz / rock fusions in the 1970's. The first album actually predates Miles Davis's seminal Bitches Brew! It is great, therefore, to have these tracks reproduced in such high quality sound on CD. Especially if you do not possess, or have never heard, the vinyl originals, which are quite rare, and expensive to obtain second hand. Having all of the originals on vinyl, I can attest to the fact that the CD sound is very true to the original.It is just a shame that, to minimise the number of discs, some vinyl LP's are split across two CD's. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Labyrinth - a continuous suite split across two sides of the LP. It would be great to hear it as a single piece.

As a long standing fan of Nucleus I looked forward to getting this set. I have the albums and some of the earlier CD releases and I saw Nucleus live in the early 1970's. To get all the albums in one package is fine although there could have been a little more information. The packaging is economical! Listening to the first CD, I was disappointed by the quality of the sound of the first 'LP'. Yes the soloists are more up front but the background players seemed to produce a very muddy sound as though in another room and to me this was not as clear and sharp and coherent as I had hoped for and the cohesive playing so apparent on the LP was missing. The quality did seem to improve on the following CDs but was not significantly different to the earlier CD releases. Good to have all the albums in one place and the price isn't excessive for the number of albums present but if you already have the albums on earlier CDs, buying this may need some thought.

There's a lot to listen to and probably best to take it easy and savour each one. The earliest recordings are the purest and best, done without reliance on making money; Carr got Arts Council grants, though they weren't huge. Towards the end the music gets more mainstream in an attempt to make money. The sound is great and top value for money.

The albums, sound and music are awesome. But the packaging is a bit strange. One album's B side start on the other CD following another albums A side. I really don't understand the logic here. Every album pressed on a separate disc will be much more convenient.Anyway, the music is superb so I'm not complaining much :) Music 5 stars / Packaging 3 stars / Overall 4 stars

I did not pay (enough) attention to the band and its members as I was owner of a record shop for over 25 years (1980-2008) !! So strange !