Anekdoten - Nucleus (1995)

Despite some growth from their King Crimson roots, this album shows Anekdoten still sounding remarkably like Red. "Harvest," opening with a creepily distorted Rhodes piano, establishes the band's somewhat overused pattern of alternating metallic verses clotted with bass, guitar and hi-hat with gorgeously soaring choruses of Mellotron, cello, and ride cymbals. "Here" gives the guitar theatrics a rest and allows Liljestrom's melancholy vocals and the group's delicate playing to come to the foreground. Its mournful lyrics and pensive strings are played over a wheezing pump organ -- listen for Nicholas Berg's feet pumping away at the bellows in the background. The concluding "In Freedom" points to a possible path to the future by eschewing gratuitous heaviness for their real talent, which is constructing beautiful interplay between percussion, cello, and the Mellotron.