Customer Reviews
two facets of carr - By: A. Dutkiewicz, 25 Apr 2004 
I met Ian Carr at the 1990 Edinburgh Festival. He was playing up therewith the Anton Brothers, a young jazz-rock groupin the mould of WeatherReport. The gig was fantastic, & I went to talk to Ian afterwards. Inthat conversation he mentioned his biography of Miles Davis, & directedme to Old Heartland (1988) as one of his favourite records until thattime, & the troubles he was having with its distribution. So I wasthrilled to finally get a copy on CD more than a decade later.
Old Heartland is completely different to what a follower of Ian's workwith Nucleus might expect. It is a suite of four jazz-classicalcompositions, Northumbrian Sketches, performed with the Manchester StringOrchestra (later Kreisler String Orchestra), which has also worked withMichael Nymnan, & three other tunes, perfomed with old colleagues fromNucleus, Geoff Castle & John Marshall, & others. There's elements ofJoseph Haydn, Vaughan William's & Benjamin Britten as Carr builds anindigenous English vocabularlyin which to add his knowledge ofcontemporary jazz, with influences of ECM artists & Miles Davis
inhis work with Gil Evans.
Northumbrian Sketches was commissionedin 1986 by the Bracknell jazz andclassical music festivals; & Carr wrote it as a tribute to his latefriend, the author Sid Chaplin. Its lyrical trumpet lines are full ofmelancholy & majesty, soaring above landscapes of strings. It'ssophisticated & highly cultured music, serious & concentrated finelyinto superb performances. The complementary material is beautifullycrafted too, gentle & tastefully fitting the conceptual objective of therecording. The bass clarinet & flugelhorn combinations on Full FathomFive are particularly lush, & Marshall's gentle percussive touches andMark Wood's acoustic guitar melodies give the title track the rightbalance. A great album for quiet contemplation.
Out of the Long Dark (1979) suggests a period of transition, a strugglefor direction that inevitably followed his jazz-rock period, as he soughta deeper & more open musical structure. It took over forty hours torecord, when most of his discs until then had been relatively spontaneous.It is particularly interestingin this 2-for-1 combination set, as itshows Carr still embeddedin the funky grooves of his jazz-rock but movingtowards the mature style he explored on Old Heartland, recorded almost adecade later. The music is mostly upbeat & energetic, finding newtextures (a la Jon Hassell or late Miles at times) & a few soulfulmoments along the way, especiallyin the title track & Black Ballad.
Brilliant fusion - By: , 03 May 2003 
'Old Heartlands' is an interesting album, but something of a departure for Ian; it lacks the pulsing fusion edge. But 'Out of the Long Dark' is an incredible album, full of vibrancy & energy. The bass playing is brilliant (Billy Kristian), & I would have loved to see the band live at this stage. This incarnation of 'Nucleus' also features on the excellent 'Harmony of the Spheres' by Neil Ardley. Fans of funk, jazz, or just brilliant music will love this album.
