Alright so last night I finally got to sit down, warm up the rig and play the 30th anniversary Aja release. I have to admit I did crank up the volume and why not, the original pressing I purchased 30 years ago does sound really good loud so why not this one too.
My first listening impressions were consistent across the entire album, that is in general all tracks have a more forward, natural, in-your-face and great sounding saxophone. I mean the brass is “there”. I can hear a lot more of the wind in the instrument and it sounded much more real compared to the original pressing. The cymbals are also very convincingly real, as though a better application of EQ was applied and also a bit higher in level. Very brassy, and you can clearly hear the drum stick attack on the cymbal. Any time the plucking rhythm guitar came in you could here a nice edge on the string as the player picked the notes, nice touch. In addition the rhythm guitars were recorded at a higher level whenever they would be the center instrument in the composition of the song as in a bridge. Any percussion seemed to be higher in level also, bringing out more of the support they provided to the momentum of the piece…I noticed this in all the tracks. As for Fagan’s’ voice, it seemed to me as though it were the same as the original recording, not much difference here, although it always sounded great anyway, centered, solid, and so unique.
On another note, someone play this album loud on your rig and tell me if there are faint voices just prior to “I Got The News” starts…and tell me someone was not speaking to me from the closet next to me while I sat in the dark playing this most excellent album…maybe it was my neighbors talking, but then again the windows were all closed.
Summed up, nice re-release. Most noticeable difference, the sax, clearer, much more convincing and centered image, very real between my ReQuests. I’ll be giving this a lot more listens…happy I made this purchase.
Sam
