Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen has taken on the task of overseeing the reissue of the first seven Steely Dan over the next year.
The albums will be available on 33 1/3 RPM vinyl but also a limited release will be available in 45RPM Ultra High-Quality Vinyl (UHQR) as well as Super Audio CD (SACD).
All albums are being meticulously remastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog tapes except for Aja, which will be mastered from an analog, non-EQ’d, tape copy, and Gaucho, which will be sourced from a 1980 analog tape copy originally EQ’d by Bob Ludwig. (There’s no evidence the original tapes containing the flat mixes of Aja and Gaucho were delivered to the record label and it’s presumed the tapes no longer exist.) Lacquers for UMe’s standard 33 1/3 RPM 180-gram version will be cut by Alex Abrash at his renowned AA Mastering studio from high-resolution digital files of Grundman’s new masters and pressed at Precision. They will be housed in reproductions of the original artwork.
The 45 RPM UHQR version will be pressed at Analogue Productions’ Quality Record Pressings on 200-gram Clarity Vinyl, packaged in a deluxe box, and will include a booklet detailing the entire process of making a UHQR along with a certificate of inspection. Each UHQR is pressed, using hand-selected vinyl, with attention paid to every single detail of every single record. All of the innovations introduced by QRP that have been generating such incredible critical acclaim are applied to each UHQR. The 200-gram records feature the same flat profile that helped to make the original UHQR so desirable.
The first release in the reissue series will be the 1972 Steely Dan debut ‘Can’t Buy A Thrill’.
The releases will go from 1972’s ‘Can’t Buy A Thrill’ to 1980’s ‘Gaucho’. Steely Dan released two more albums starting 20 years later with ‘Two Against Nature’ (2000) and ending with ‘Everything Must Go’ (2003).
Steely Dan came to an end when Walter Becker died from complications of esophageal cancer on September 3, 2017.
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