Oregon Music

Essential: A masterpiece of jazz fusion music.
On Oregon's debut album what you get is jazz fusion with a strong emphasis on the jazz side of the equation.

Music of Another Present Era remains Oregon's most enduring masterwork. Achieving a perfect balance of musical traditions from the East and West, ancient to future, they set the stage not only for a new transculturalism in jazz, but also created a lasting template for the fusion of musics from world traditions that would flower over a decade later. The four participants in Oregon, oboist and pianist Paul McCandless, guitarist and pianist Ralph Towner, upright bassist and pianist Glen Moore, and the late multi-instrumentalist Collin Walcott, operated on the premise that melodic ideas and expansive harmonies all contributed to a music that didn't bridge cultures, but erased them and eradicated them.

Music of Another Present Era remains Oregon's most enduring masterwork. Achieving a perfect balance of musical traditions from the East and West, ancient to future, they set the stage not only for a new transculturalism in jazz, but also created a lasting template for the fusion of musics from world traditions that would flower over a decade later. […] This is fusion music, to be sure, but it's the kind of fusion musicians have been trying unsuccessfully to emulate for decades. Music of Another Present Era is one of the most poetic and groundbreaking records to be released in the 1970s. ~Thom Jurek, All Music

Oregon - Our First Record (1970) {Vanguard–PJL Japan MTCJ-2550 rel 2004, Paper Sleeve}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 252 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 115 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 23 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970, 2004 Vanguard / PJL Japan | MTCJ-2550
Jazz / World Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Folk Jazz

Let's get one thing straight from the outset: Oregon is not nor were they Ever a "New Age" group. There is nothing saccahrinely simple or cloyingly pretty about this music - it is harmonically complex, rhythmically interesting and melodically uncliched. I have never understood why this band came to be labeled in such a facile and flagrantly inaccurate way. Along with bandleader Paul Winter (and coming from a completely different place,) Miles Davis, they were the true godfathers of what's come to be known as world jazz. Not to mention important contributors to 3rd stream music.

This is one case where the legend really precedes the record itself. Cut for about 600 dollars in Jack Endino's studio over just a matter of days, this captures Nirvana at a formative stage, still indebted to the murk that became known as grunge, yet not quite finding their voice as songwriters…