ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

One of the rarer fruits to emerge from the British folk-rock underground, Oberon was a seven-member collective whose sole 1971 release, A Midsummer's Night Dream, has earned a reputation as a cult classic not only for its dreamy progressive folk style, but for its utter scarcity. Independently recorded by a group of Radley College students in Oxford, only about one hundred copies were ever pressed before the band broke up. Highly sought-after among record collectors, the mystique of A Midsummer's Night Dream carried into the 21st century with just a handful of reissues celebrating its existence. One of the more prominent of these came from U.K. archival imprint Grapefruit Records, which issued a deluxe two-disc version in 2021, a half-century after the album's original limited release.

Inspired by groups like Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and King Crimson, Oberon formed at Oxford's Radley College in 1970 with a lineup consisting of Robin Clutterbuck (vocals, guitar), Jan Scrimgeour (vocals, guitar), Julian Smedley (vocals, violin), Chris Smith (guitar), Charlie Seaward (flute), Bernie Birchall (bass), and Nick Powell (percussion). Taking both their band name and (slightly modified) album title from William Shakespeare's classic comedy, Oberon's sound combined elements of the pastoral psych-folk of the Incredible String Band with some of the more complex structures of progressive rock. At the beginning of their summer holiday in 1971, they set up their gear and a recording desk in a vacant classroom at the college and self-recorded what would end up being their only album. Self-financed and released by the tiny Acorn label, only 99 copies of A Midsummer's Night Dream were ever pressed ,and most of them were circulated amongst friends and family. Oberon's existence as a group didn't last the year, and along with a spring concert they had captured earlier in 1971, their LP remained the only document of their brief career.

Over the coming decades, A Midsummer's Night Dream earned a reputation for its extremely limited availability and became somewhat of a high-coveted (and quite valuable) unicorn among record collectors. Also a unique sonic document of a very specific era of British music, Oberon secured their place in the annals of England's folk-rock scene as one of its rarest cult bands. Since the mid-'90s, a handful of small labels, mostly in the U.K. and Europe, have offered up reissues and brought A Midsummer's Night Dream into the digital age. In 2021, Cherry Red's psych imprint, Grapefruit Records, celebrated the album's 50th anniversary with a deluxe version that also included Oberon's 1971 spring concert on a bonus disc. ~ Timothy Monger