I have just bought, and have been playing, the latest (30th anniversary) pressing of this landmark LP from Steely Dan. I have several copies. An early American pressing, one of millions, is perhaps the least attractive (though I did at the time have a British pressing since lost that I recall being better). The first CD release (from the early 80s) wasn't bad, though compared with the remaster from 1999, which is CD demonstration quality and remastering, the earlier version is undeniably flat and lacking life. The remastered CD is preferable in every way even to that American Vinyl pressing. I was able, though, to get a Japanese Vinyl LP pressing, which bettered the CD immeasurably: sweet, detailed, airy and deep. Only my "audiophile" Mobile Fidelity pressing bettered it but that is almost too much of a good thing: sweet and detailed but on side two especially (the female voices on "I got the News") just scraping the limits of record playback and threatening harsh top notes and scraping cymbals. The new release is the best of the lot. All the sweetness and detail of the Mobile Fidelity without the excess and all the naturalness and consistency of my much loved and not to be forsaken Japanese pressing.
People complain about the production on this, Fagen's controlling obsessiveness, and the cold blooded calculation of intricately balanced overdubs. Becker and Fagen have since expressed--against their own meticulous practices of the 70s and 80s--huge admiration for Ashford and Simpson in the studio, for whom the band just cooks, while they "express themselves," and no one in their right minds would want to be without the Ashford and Simpson catalogue (in whatever format). Fagen coveted their sound. But a point is in danger of going missing. There's no shortage of loosely played blue-eyed, brown-eyed (no-eyed) soul from the late 1970s. Why would we want more. Fagen coveted all kinds of sounds and in his peculiar attempts to reproduce them, thus pursuing his soul/rock/jazz/pop hybrid experiments and hiring the very best of the best to play them, produced something remarkable. There is nothing like Aja (not even Gaucho, but there's nothing like that either--roll on the 30th anniversary of that miracle) and why anybody would want it to be anything other than what it is I simply cannot grasp.
Anyway--this is the closest I believe we mortals have ever been allowed to get to the sound of the legendary 12" master tapes themselves (booming out through those B&W monitors) and there's no excuse to be listening to much else again for a few months. This is truly the day of the incredible expanding man.
