Odessey and Oracle has done amazingly well for an album that not too many people noticed on its original release in 1968 -- there have been at least three CD reissues of it since 1988, and this is number four. The 12 original tracks have been expanded to 28, the same number as the disc containing this album on the Zombie Heaven box and the free-standing 30th anniversary edition from Big Beat, but they don't entirely overlap; the complete original album is here, along with a half-dozen accompanying late 1968 outtakes that originally surfaced on Epic Records' Time of the Zombies compilation in 1973, but it also reaches back as far as 1965, to songs such as "Goin' Out of My Head," and several early tracks that only surfaced in the 1980s. The sound is state-of-the-art, and does present the original LP about as well as it ever is likely to be heard (at least, until the DVD-audio version of this album appears); the range of sounds encompassed in the collection is very wide, covering psychedelia and pop/R&B, and it does flow together. For a truly coherent look at their late period, the Big Beat single disc or box may be preferable, though it is difficult to criticize any of the music on this disc on its own terms. The notes present a decent account of the making of the original album, though nowhere near as detailed as the annotation on the Big Beat release. ~ Bruce Eder