Zombies Odessey & Oracle ( stereo ) 180g vinyl LP

Release date: 30-06-2013 ( originally released in 1968 )

2013 EU stereo ( remaster 180g vinyl LP) Odyssey And Oracle is the British pop group’s all-time classic concept album. This great collection of beautifully crafted songs has long been hailed as one of the best albums to emerge from the '60s. The strident piano playing of Argent and Blunstone’s richly melodic vocals imbue these confident, lively pop songs with a special quality that lives on to this day.

New Half Speed Mastering by Jon Astley at Abbey Road Studios From HD 24 Bit Audio

Tracks:
A1     Care Of Cell 44     
A2     A Rose For Emily     
A3     Maybe After He's Gone     
A4     Beechwood Park     
A5     Brief Candles     
A6     Hung Up On A Dream     

B1     Changes     
B2     I Want Her She Wants Me     
B3     This Will Be Our Year     
B4     Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914)     
B5     Friends Of Mine     
B6     Time Of The Season     

The Zombies were much admired during the '60s beat boom. Blessed with a superb lead singer (Colin Blunstone) and a fine young keyboard player (Rod Argent), their melodic, catchy songs fully caught the public’s imagination. Recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in 1967 during the final months of the Zombies’ short career, the band's masterpiece Odyssey And Oracle yielded their last great hit "Time Of The Season," but was destined for release after they had already broken up.

Odyssey And Oracle is the British pop group’s all-time classic concept album. This great collection of beautifully crafted songs has long been hailed as one of the best albums to emerge from the '60s. The strident piano playing of Argent and Blunstone’s richly melodic vocals imbue these confident, lively pop songs with a special quality that lives on to this day.

All serious completist record collectors and Zombies fans will want to savor a work that has been the subject of a huge revival of interest. Listen and you’ll know why American A&R man Al Kooper insisted that Columbia put out the album, when it was in danger of being overlooked!

ALLMUSIC REVIEW:

Odessey and Oracle was one of the flukiest (and best) albums of the 1960s, and one of the most enduring long-players to come out of the entire British psychedelic boom, mixing trippy melodies, ornate choruses, and lush Mellotron sounds with a solid hard rock base. But it was overlooked completely in England and barely got out in America (with a big push by Al Kooper, who was then a Columbia Records producer); and it was neglected in the U.S. until the single "Time of the Season," culled from the album, topped the charts nearly two years after it was recorded, by which time the group was long disbanded. Ironically, at the time of its recording in the summer of 1967, permanency was not much on the minds of the bandmembers. Odessey and Oracle was intended as a final statement, a bold last hurrah, having worked hard for three years only to see the quality of their gigs decline as the hits stopped coming. The results are consistently pleasing, surprising, and challenging: "Hung Up on a Dream" and "Changes" are some of the most powerful psychedelic pop/rock ever heard out of England, with a solid rhythm section, a hot Mellotron sound, and chiming, hard guitar, as well as highly melodic piano. "Changes" also benefits from radiant singing. "This Will Be Our Year" makes use of trumpets (one of the very few instances of real overdubbing) in a manner reminiscent of "Penny Lane"; and then there's "Time of the Season," the most well-known song in their output and a white soul classic. Not all of the album is that inspired, but it's all consistently interesting and very good listening, and superior to most other psychedelic albums this side of the Beatles' best and Pink Floyd's early work. Indeed, the only complaint one might have about the original LP is its relatively short running time, barely over 30 minutes, but even that's refreshing in an era where most musicians took their time making their point, and most of the CD reissues have bonus tracks to fill out the space available. ALLMUSIC