STEELY DAN CLASSICS RETURN TO VINYL

UMe is tired of stowing away the time: The first seven Steely Dan albums—released from 1972 through 1980 on ABC and MCA—will be reissued on vinyl during the coming year, starting 11/4 with Can’t Buy a Thrill.

The rollout continues throughout 2022 and 2023 with 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, 1974’s Pretzel Logic, 1975’s Katy Lied, 1976’s The Royal Scam, 1977’s Aja and 1980’s Gaucho.

Overseen by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, the LPs will be available on 33 & 1/3 RPM, 180-gram black vinyl via Geffen/UMe and in a limited-edition premium 45 RPM version on ultra-high-quality vinyl from Analogue Productions, the in-house audiophile reissue label of Acoustic Sounds. Analogue Productions will also release the titles on Super Audio CD. (If you bought these albums when they came out, you’re already aware of Steely Dan's attention to sound quality.)

Renowned engineer Bernie Grundman is handling the remastering from the original analog tapes, except for Aja, which will be mastered from an analog, non-EQd tape copy, and Gaucho, which will be sourced from a 1980 analog tape copy originally EQd by famed mastering engineer Bob Ludwig. (There’s no evidence that the original tapes containing the flat mixes of Aja and Gaucho were ever delivered to the record label, and it’s presumed they no longer exist.)