“Aja”, the sixth Steely Dan album, has been an audiophile favorite since its 1977 LP release. Songwriter-performers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who had discontinued touring, hired a stellar lineup of first-tier session musicians and ran through untold hours of studio time. In this expensive venture, the pair were enabled by producer Gary Katz and by executive session engineer Roger Nichols, who went on to earn a Grammy award for the album.

NOTES OF A NON-FAN

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Steely Dan. Although my musical interests have changed and broadened in the decades since the album was released, my lack of interest in Steely Dan has remained constant. Researching this review reinforced and clarified what were formerly vague feelings, and listening closely to the new SACD reissue only confirmed what I first thought, many years ago:

“Aja” is one the most overrated albums of the 1970s.

Quotes from interviews with Becker and Fagen about the recording of “Aja” reveal astonishing arrogance and self-congratulatory perfectionism. The recording process took months and cost a small fortune. Was it really artistically necessary to hire a different drummer for almost every track? Becker and Fagen stuck with bassist Chuck Rainey and vibist Victor Feldman throughout, both of whom contributed instrumental continuity to the album. Couldn’t they have done just as well having Larry Carlton and Walter Becker play all the guitar parts?

At the New York sessions for “Peg”, they went through something like seven guitar players, and erased each track in dissatisfaction until they settled on L.A. session guitarist Jay Graydon, and kept him recording solo after solo, for hours. It’s inarguable that the resulting song was a radio hit, but is that the most important goal of music-making?

The title track, with its tricky, faux-jazz chord progression, has been lauded and analyzed at exhaustive length. Steve Gadd’s drum playing has been elevated to legendary status; what’s underneath all the adoration is solid drum technique and a rare moment of spontaneity on an otherwise rigid chart. Wayne Shorter’s solo, which has been praised to the skies, is probably his least memorable recorded performance. Shorter sounds like he can’t get through the session quickly enough. It’s embarrassing to hear the most innovative composer-saxophonist of the 1960s trying to shoehorn his solo into the narrow confines of the song’s changes. All the solo tells me is that Becker and Fagen had the clout to hire Wayne Shorter.

Is it admirable that Becker and Fagen were provided an extravagant budget to hire musicians far more accomplished and experienced than themselves, just to realize their personal goals of technical perfectionism? When is a performance ever ‘perfect’? Straightjacketing musicians of the caliber of Shorter, Rainey, Victor Feldman, and Joe Sample is more of an insult than a tribute. The jazz and R&B albums that inspired Becker and Fagen were recorded live in the studio, often in a single session. Bands rehearsed, then played the music while tape rolled. There was room for live improvisation and for the inevitable technical mistakes or wrong notes that even the best musicians will make.

Perfectionism is a false premise. A great album does not consist of technically perfect performances, any more than a great painting consists of perfect brushstrokes. Real musicians learn the lesson that growth comes not only through practice, but through experimentation, without fear of imperfection.

REVIEW OF THE SACD FOR FANS

The album’s original mastering engineer, Bernie Grundman, recently remastered “Aja” for Analogue Productions in three formats: 45 RPM UHQR 2-LP set, hybrid stereo SACD, and 24/192 download. According to the Acoustic Sounds pages for the UHQR LP and the SACD, the albums were:

“Mastered by Bernie Grundman from an analog, non-Dolby EQ'd quarter-inch 15 ips tape copy”

A member of the Steve Hoffmann forum contacted Chad Kassem at Acoustic Sounds to inquire if there were any significant mastering differences between Grundman’s 24/192 download and the SACD of “Aja”, other than the final PCM and DSD delivery formats. Here’s the response:

"Although the PCM version on HDTracks was also mastered by Bernie Grundman from the same sources, we went through several revisions on the mastering with Bernie before we were satisfied, so our Analogue Productions version is exclusive to our SACD and is different than what HDTracks has for sale.” [Note: the 24/192 is also available from other hi-res download vendors.]

The refreshingly informative disclosure that Grundman mastered the 24/192 download and the Analogue Productions SACD from the same sources, and that revisions in the mastering of the AP SACD distinguish it from the 24/192 download, confirms my own impressions. The two Grundman-mastered versions sound very similar, but not exactly alike. Listeners with acute hearing and highly resolving audio systems may notice small differences between the two products, but I would not rate one over the other. Both are relaxing to the ear, without exaggeration in the high or low end. For listeners with computer music servers and standalone DACs, the 24/192 download may be preferable, because it can be remodulated to high rate DSD128 or DSD256.

A methodical comparison by Josh Mound of many different digital releases of “Aja” was posted to Audiophile Style in 2019 and subsequently updated to include the Grundman 24/192 version, though the thread does not include the new Grundman SACD. His extensive research, spectrum analyses and personal conclusions can be read here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/the-best-version-of/the-best-version-of%E2%80%A6-steely-dan%E2%80%99s-aja-r772/

I have not heard all of the remastered versions cited in that article, but I have heard the 1988 MFSL Gold CD, the 2014 SHM-SACD, the Grundman SACD and 24/192 download, and hi-res PCM needle drops of the 1999 Cisco reissue LP and the AP 45 RPM UHQR 2-LP set. The MFSL Gold CD, like the SHM-SACD, is described as being transferred from an “original master tape”, but in the case of this recording, where the original masters were known to have deteriorated by the 1980s, the term is ambiguous. The MFSL Gold CD seems to use a familiar ‘smiley-face’ EQ boost in the low and high end; but bearing in mind that the term ‘master’ can refer to a tape copy used for mastering LPs, MFSL’s engineer could have done a flat transfer of a tape that actually sounded like that. Either way, the MFSL Gold CD sounds brighter, with more sibilance and forward emphasis on the vocals and cymbals, than either of the Grundman versions.

Comparing Grundman’s AP SACD and the Universal Japan SHM-SACD requires lowering and raising the playback volume, because the SHM-SACD was mastered many decibels louder than the AP SACD. Notwithstanding Josh Mound’s spectral analysis, the SHM-SACD seems boosted in the low end for greater ‘slam’. But that might be due to the provenance of the SHM-SACD, which is described in Mound’s article, quoting the liner notes, as “’flat transfe[r] from Japan[ese] original analogue master tapes’ by Hitoshi Takiguchi at Tokyo’s Universal Music Studios”. This was not the same tape source that Grundman used in mastering his 24/192 download, the new AP SACD and the AP 45 RPM UHQR 2-LP set.

After hearing the AP 24/192 download, the AP SACD, and a 24/192 needle drop of the AP 45 RPM UHQR 2-LP set, I would without hesitation rate the Grundman versions over the Japanese SHM-SACD on the ground that Grundman was better equipped to recapture the choices made by the artists and the session engineer. While the mastering history of “Aja” frustrates direct comparisons, I believe most listeners will hear significant differences in the two SACD versions, though preferences might be purely subjective.

Copyright © 2024 Mark Werlin and HRAudio.net

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