Donald Fagen – Sunken Condos

The tracks are fine... the clear vinyl pressing is a turd... and I mean an absolute
steamer!!!! A real shame as it is such a good album and all DF pressings have been excellent up until this one :-(

I am very happy with the quality of this pressing all around. I see that other people have had issues with their copies, so I might have just gotten lucky. But, mine sounds fantastic and looks great too. I always love some good crystal clear vinyl.

Just picked mine up at Amoeba music in Los Angeles...all good - sweet sounding and smoothly playing...lovely artwork - a revisited love affair from the glorious days of Aja...

The essence of my initial review still stands, with the underlying fabric of that review being that I had expected, or hoped for much more … though now with the vinyl spinning on my turntable I find that I’m eating my own words, or more aptly, feeling that the vinyl delivers and reveals so much more, woven with an unexpected warmth of character, proving once again, that on a good turntable, vinyl sonically delivers outstanding quality.

Instantly I was struck by the album’s artwork, illustrated by Jeff Wack, and how much it benefits from being presented in this larger format, along with a simply beautiful gatefold that will nearly rapture you. I was fortunate enough to secure the double disc on clear vinyl, though oddly enough, only three sides of the wax were used, with the music sincerely sounding more rich and full with the wider grooves (less vinyl compression), though it still spins at 33 rpm, making me wonder why with all this effort, the album had not been allowed to take the obvious next step and been pressed at 45 rpm, where the aforementioned benefits would have shown ever more brightly. With that in mind, I highly suggest that you don’t go tinkering about, turning knobs and making adjustments until you’ve listened to this outing several times, allowing the new production to be embraced, as the delivery is perfect just as it is. You will also find that the release benefits form a true stereo playback, avoiding the surround sound and center channel speaker, because with all music that dances along the edges of jazz, it’s designed to come at you rather than to engulf you.

On the compact disc, as fine as it was, the one thing that stood out for me was a repetitive nature with many of the notes and instrumentation, though here, that repetitive nature reveals itself, blossoming into something larger than the sum of its parts, floating out an extremely handsome album delivered without pretense, where that statement I made about the album coming off as if Donal Fagen had spent too much time polishing the polish, was so far from the truth … where with another listen to the compact disc, I found that that element to be characteristic of the digital format.

Sunken Condos is a superb release, and must be heard on vinyl before passing judgement. None of the tracks stand out from any of the others, but that I believe is part of the jazz rock principles Fagen has always strived for, and with that in mind, has achieved here in spades.

*** The Fun Facts: Fagen claims that he didn’t think any of the individual songs had a title that worked for an album title, so he went searching for something suitably apocalyptic. If you remember your musical history, there’s a piece by Claude Debussy entitled “The Submerged Cathedral” published in 1910 revolving around harmony and content, so in a sense he updated that concept and came face to face with “Sunken Condos” (with condos being the cathedrals of our time), which could be appreciated on different levels. You can associate it with the economic problems in the world now, the sociological problems in the world, and also Fagen’s own personal situation. In other words, it’s really about getting older and maybe facing some of the realities of life, while musically structuring all of those things … at the time, Fagen was sixty-four.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Indeed manufactured in the Netherlands on the Lp label,but on rear jacket near barcode manufacturen in E.U.

Love the material (music) but the pressing leaves much to be desired. Mine was warped (playable but annoying compared to the RTI pressing of Morph The Cat purchased at the same time).

Great music, but as Jack_Wagon said, this is a suspect pressing. The sticker on the front advertises "High Performance 180g vinyl" or something. But it took me three copies to get a good one. Among the issues I had were warped records, very (audibly) off-center, and one of them had vinyl or plastic residue stuck to it.