Nucleus

On 18 February 1976 Nucleus, the jazz-rock group led by trumpeter Ian Carr, played Loughborough University on the tour for their album Alleycat, and a mobile studio recorded the concert. Live At Loughborough University 1976 is that recording on two CDs, just over a hundred minutes of music. It has all five pieces of Alleycat in stage versions and three numbers from earlier records.

The band is a sextet. Carr plays trumpet, flugelhorn and synthesizer. Bob Bertles moves between alto, soprano and baritone saxophones and flute, with Ken Shaw on guitar, Geoff Castle on keyboards, Roger Sutton on bass guitar and Roger Sellers on drums and percussion. The recording was made by the Realsound Mobile with Geoff Woodward as engineer, and mixed by John Moon.

The first disc holds three long performances. It opens with Snakehips Etcetera, the title piece of the group's other 1975 album, which runs to nearly sixteen minutes here. Sutton's Phaideaux Corner follows, then Carr's Alleycat, close to twenty minutes long. The second disc completes the album with Bertles's Nosegay, You Can't Be Sure (credited to Carr, Shaw and Sutton) and Splat. Between them comes Pastoral Graffiti, a Carr piece first heard on Under The Sun in 1974. The closer is Sutton's Alive And Kicking, at twenty-two minutes the longest track of the set.

Carr wrote four of the eight pieces alone. Sutton's name is on three and Bertles wrote one, so half of the programme involves another writer from inside the band. The running times are those of a group that stretched its material on stage: five of the eight performances pass eleven minutes, and only You Can't Be Sure stays under six.

The tape was first released in 2006 under the title UK Tour '76. This Esoteric Recordings edition (ECLEC22954), issued in October 2026 and produced by Mark Powell, has been remastered from the original master tapes by Ben Wiseman and approved by the Ian Carr Trust. The two CDs come in a trifold digipak with an illustrated booklet and liner notes by Sid Smith.