Vinyl LP pressing. Aja is the sixth studio album by Steely Dan, originally released in 1977. On the album, band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting with different combinations of session players, enlisting the services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more sophisticated compositions and arrangements.

1LP Vinyl B0035028-01

Aja is as much a jazz record as a pop one, though in its best moments, its both and neither. Steely Dan were so expert at fusing genres its often hard to say what bit came from where, or exactly which tradition (fusion, R&B, soul, disco, classical) was being mined or reimagined. Because these songs were rendered so seamlessly, its easy to overlook how brazen they were. Aja is like driving down a treacherous, cliff-side road in the most luxurious car ever made: If you sink deep enough into that supple leather seat, it is possible to forget entirely about the twists and turns, the threat of looming destruction. Its possible to forget about gravity entirely.