Released $2.05

About Released

Jeff Oster spent his youth playing in bar bands, then opted out into the lucrative world of financial advising. All the while, he spent his free time playing in an Oakland funk group. None of that will prepare you for Jeff Oster's debut album, Released. Echoes listeners have been getting a taste for this CD since last year when Oster put out a 4 song EP. All four of those tunes appear here on a disc that elaborates on the themes of that little EP teaser.

Oster plays trumpet, an instrument not usually associated with ambient music, which may explain why he usually employs the more mellow flugelhorn. Exhibiting amazing restraint, Oster eshews the usual smooth jazz rhythms and funk designs of artists like Chris Botti and instead turns his focus on moods and atmospheres.

Some tracks are wistful and pastoral like the title track, which is mostly just Oster and guitarist Will Ackerman, who also produced the album. Others chart darker terrain like the mysterious, foreboding sound of "Behind the Veil," which features fractured programmed rhythms pulsing behind vocal fragments and ethereal choirs from Happy Rhodes. She appears on the tribal electronica of "Haleakala" as well, a track co-written by Philip Aaberg, who brings his acoustic piano ruminations to bear on "Fool's Gold." He sounds a lament from the edge, along with Oster's hymn-like harmonized trumpet lines. Now in his 40s, it's taken Jeff Oster a lifetime to arrive at his debut album. And Released is worth the wait.

John Diliberto - Echoes.org