– A brief, brooding exploration centered around Glen Moore's avant-garde piano phrasing.
The four musicians began exploring group improvisations, blending their diverse backgrounds in classical, jazz, and folk music into a sound that was entirely new. They first recorded an album in 1970, but the label, Increase Records, went out of business before it could be released. Undeterred, they made their formal live debut in New York City in 1971 under the unwieldy name "Thyme — Music of Another Present Era" before McCandless suggested the more succinct and regionally resonant name, Oregon. Their first official release, Music of Another Present Era , was finally issued on the Vanguard label in 1972.
Oregon’s Music of Another Present Era (1972): A FLAC Audiophile Review and Retrospective Oregon Music of Another Present Era 1972 FLAC
The roots of Oregon trace back to the University of Oregon, where guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner and bassist Glen Moore first collaborated. Their musical trajectory shifted dramatically when they joined the Paul Winter Consort in the late 1960s, meeting oboist Paul McCandless and sitarist/percussionist Collin Walcott.
– A frantic, rhythmically complex piece driven by Towner’s aggressive classical guitar attack, demonstrating that acoustic music can match the intensity of electric jazz fusion. – A brief, brooding exploration centered around Glen
The musical tapestry of Music of Another Present Era makes it an ideal candidate for the FLAC format. The subtle interplay between Walcott's sitar and McCandless's oboe, the resonant thrum of Moore's double bass, and the delicate decay of Towner's piano notes—these are nuances that can be flattened or lost entirely in lower-bitrate formats. A FLAC version, sometimes found in releases that utilize an "image+.cue" structure to preserve the album's original sequencing, captures the full acoustic richness of the Vanguard's 23rd Street Studios in New York, where the album was recorded. Hearing the album in FLAC is to experience it as the artists and engineers intended: a pure, unadulterated, and profoundly immersive listening experience.
Music of Another Present Era is a poetic, groundbreaking record, often cited as a cornerstone of prog-folk and acoustic jazz-fusion, according to reviews on Prog Archives . Key Tracks Undeterred, they made their formal live debut in
A bass solo by Glen Moore that sounds like a prehistoric creature stirring. Moore uses double stops and percussive slaps. In high-resolution FLAC, the woody thump of the bass body and the metallic ring of the strings are separate, distinct events. This track is often used by audiophiles to test speaker transient response.
: A fast-paced piece highlighting the interplay between tablas and 12-string guitar.
Elias realized he couldn't feel his chair anymore. He was floating in a spectrum of sound where jazz and classical music bled into a prehistoric folk. The FLAC file wasn't playing music; it was unfolding a map. Every bit of data was a coordinate.
: High-resolution digital versions (FLAC/ALAC) are available through platforms like and other audiophile distributors. Apple Music