Aja

by

Steely Dan

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Not many albums have influenced me as much as Steely Dan's Aja. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have created a most unique flavour of Jazz meets Rock where beatiful melodies, genius production and perfect performance blend to produce a timeless masterpiece. This album should be on the A-List of everyone who appreciates the beauty of music. The album is full of complex musical concepts which immediately remind the progressive rock fan some of the common manoeuvres in classic progressive rock albums. Take the title song "Aja" for example. This piece takes you on a eight minutes ride to diverse musical patterns that vary between rock and jazz moods, amplified by rich orchestration. Other songs such as "Decon Blues" and "Home At Last" constantly prove to be intriguing while "Black Cow" is captivating. The presence of saxophonist Wayne Shorter on "Aja" is blessed - as a serious Shorter's fan I was delighted to see his inclusion on the album and I regard this decision as a wise one - the solo part he plays is terrific, bringing his genius and gifts to combine perfectly with the different environment he plays in. I would also like to add it is worthwhile for Steely Dan fans to get the remastered version of the album, just for the sound quality. Usually I cannot tell the difference, but since I had the original CD release and heard it so much, I could compare. The difference is amazing, the quality is much better - you can actually hear new sounds and appreciate the separation of the different instruments. The liner notes are quite disappointing, so I ordered the DVD to learn more about making of this unusual album. This album made me buy all of Steely Dan's albums, so if you like it I would recommend underrated "The Royal Scam" and "Countdown to Ecstasy" albums, although all are excellent. Get this album, it may be one of your best musical purchases ever. I know my getting to know it was a bless.

This review is for the Japanese SACD version of the disk and focuses on the audio quality.

For the very high price of this disk, I was disappointed. The sound quality is little better, if any at all, than a standard CD. Given the fanatical devotion that Steely Dan has always shown to recording quality, I just can't believe this is a representation of the master tape. So while I highly recommend the music, this version is just too much money for too little quality. Buy a standard CD and use the savings to get some of the other fine SACD and DVD-Audio Steely Dan (and Donald Fagen) offerings.