Steely Dan: Aja

Call Steely Dan rock, rock fusion, jazz fusion, soft rock, or pop. No matter the category you choose to characterize their music, one thing is for sure, they are a band that is popular with music lovers of just about every genre. Founded in New York in 1971 by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Steely Dan recorded seven albums before disbanding in 1980 and coming back together again in 1993 to record two additional albums, one of which, Two Against Nature, won them a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

Surprisingly, Steely Dan’s sixth and biggest selling Album, Aja, released on September 23, 1977, by ABC Records, and regarded by many as one of the greatest albums of all time, lost the Grammy nomination for Album of the Year and Best Pop Duo or Group. However, Aja did win a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording Non-Classical. A great win, but not “the” win they were hoping for. That said, the competition was stiff in 1977. The biggest selling album of all time, Eagles Hotel California, won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year for their song Hotel California, and Fleetwood Mac, another top selling album of all time, won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Rumors.

Recording alongside nearly scores of studio musicians, Fagen and Becker utilized the time ways from touring to experiment with edgy sounds with different combinations of session players while also developing lengthier and more sophisticated compositions. In retrospect, when you look at the progression of their music over the course of their previous five albums, you can hear an album like Aja in the making.

Driven by songs chart topping songs like Peg, Deacon Blues, and Josie, Aja entered the Billboard album charts in 1977 at number 26, peaking at number three, and spent 52 weeks in the top 40. Like a fine wine, since its release, Aja has done nothing other than become better with age. The sophistication of the production, orchestration, musicianship, and creative expression is at a level that is rare and truly awe inspiring.

Aja has appeared frequently in rankings of the greatest albums of all time, with critics applauding the album's high production standards. In 2010, the Library of Congress selected the album for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant." Such a selection underscores the impact Fagen and Becker, through Aja, have had on the direction pop, rock and jazz have taken because of their influence.

TRACK LIST
1. Black Cow
2. Aja
3. Deacon Blues
4. Peg
5. Home At Last
6. I Got The News
7. Josie

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s Original Master Recording from 1980 is a decent pressing, but not one that is so good it warrants the price you’ll have to pay to get it. Nor is it that much better than the original from 1977. The record is a little flat, treble heavy and lacking the dynamic range that one would expect from this record and MOFI. This is hard for us to say because Aja is probably one of our favorite albums of all time and MOFI is one of our favorite producers of quality vinyl pressings.

We'd recommend investing in Cisco's 30th Anniversary edition if you can afford it and you are able to find one. Maybe Analogue Productions UHQR release will be "the one" for audiophiles. Maybe the 2023 reissue will be the one for the masses. This one certainly is not, especially for the money. 💸

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