Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

It is not what you know, but what you come to understand that means you have found revolution and evolution to be twins sharing a similar heart, a beat that time will always provide even when you don’t realise its was always waiting for you to catch up and be part of the movement going forward.

Evolution and revolution beats within every pulse of music, and perhaps for Steely Dan that was the driving force as Walter Becker and Donald Fagan sought expanse, as they strove for a kind of enlightenment and ambition in the album Aja.

Both those states of creativity were without fully established as the album progressed, and by utilising an astounding number of musicians across the entire process, including Timothy B. Schmidt, Pete Christlieb, Steve Gadd, Chuck Rainey, Victor Feldman, and Michael McDonald, the sense of combination of utility and expression arguably took them further away from their auspicious beginnings, and into a place where experimentation was not only sacred, but universally admired.

The album is one of glorious achievement, one that sets out to defy expectation and the premise of more of the same, and instead alludes to the Progressive in ways that could not be imagined when the group first came together.

Of course, it meant that the live arena suffered consequently, the replication of such diverse musicianship that had been knocking at the door could not at the time be found to have a home outside of the studio in a way that would honour the outstanding nature of what was happening in the minds of the two men at the helm of the Steely Dan ship.

Aja is a magical trip, symphonic, authentic, a flight of imagination that complimented the period of musical appreciation to take the art further that it had ever been able to go, and yet it still sounded complete, passionate, instrumentally cool and full of belief, and as the tracks Black Cow, Aja, Deacon Blues, Peg, Home At Last, I Got The News, and Josie were devoured by the fans, what was understood that one part of the group dynamic may have been lost, but the evolution was such that it mattered more that the group’s voice was pushed into areas that defied containment, that pushed at the boundaries with a force that was natural, harmonious, and broad-minded.

With the band finally reissuing this dynamic piece of history for the fans, what remains is the proof that revolutions come not only for the one creating history, but for those willing to understand the reason why it was required; a in Aja, that understanding is evolution magnified.

Ian D. Hall