I am not a “classic rock” or “jazz fusion” enthusiast per se, but I have an affinity for interesting music in any genre. I found Steely Dan extremely interesting, and felt constantly compelled to listen more. By the winter of 2009, I was wandering through Gaucho when the bridge two minutes into “Time Out Of Mind” sparked my imagination. That would make a great sample.

I casually began to comb the band’s catalog for other sound clips that lent themselves to electronic composition. I found them everywhere. The idea to create an entire album using only Steely Dan samples actually seemed possible.

Due to a serious injury in early 2010, I had two weeks with nothing to do but waste time on a laptop. I committed myself to the concept and started carving into Aja. Yes, it was blasphemy, but… I am the devil.

Admittedly, I’m not the first person to sample Steely Dan. But I hope to demonstrate a deeper appreciation of the source material than, for example, the hip-hop act 213, with their borrowed “Black Cow” vocal, “Like a gangster…” (because they’re literally gangsters. It’s fairly straightforward).

I’m also aware that there is a sizable contingent of music fans who consider sampling the prime hack art. I wouldn’t be surprised if accomplished professional musicians such as Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, and their cadre of virtuosos are members of this group. The fact that Day Glow Freaks is entirely made of music performed by these men could spell contempt for my project. That possibility is haunting to say the least, almost as much as the possibility the same men might employ evil lawyers who don’t know homage when they hear it.

I am an admirer like any other. To be clear, I do not have access to instrumental tracks or alternate versions of any Steely Dan song. The sound clippings I used for Day Glow Freaks came from the same album recordings available to the public.

In addition to the inherent limitations of working with mixed-down source material, it was my intent to compose Day Glow Freaks within three guidelines. One, I would not change the native note of any sample. It is deceptively easy to make pitch adjustments to one note and create whole new melodies. Since any melody I could create would be inferior to the melodies that already existed, I decided to leave the pitch of every sample as-is (I did, however, stretch and compress the tempo of some samples to keep concurrent rhythms synchronized). Secondly, I would use effects sparingly (mostly reverb and EQ filters), and only when they enhanced the overall quality of a mix.

The final guideline I set stated that Day Glow Freaks would be strictly instrumental. In my opinion, Donald Fagen’s voice and lyrics have already told explicit stories, and aside from the questionable musical quality of fragmented words and sentences, it felt wrong to use his voice to tell a different tale. The stories told by instruments, however, are much more implicit. We each translate the tone of a piano note differently, and even more so when the context of that note is changed. It’s therefore easier to rearrange these sounds to create new stories without degrading their original value.

Unifying the conceptual approach to Day Glow Freaks is the particular use of names. The album’s title is borrowed from the “Kid Charlemagne” lyric “all those dayglow freaks who used to paint the face / they’ve joined the human race…” and is tied conceptually to the song titles on the album. I interpreted the “freaks” as a group of people with whom you were once familiar but have since become estranged. Likewise, I saw Day Glow Freaks as an opportunity to tell the stories of Steely Dan characters we know little about—the supporting cast in the band’s catalog of narratives. Each song on Day Glow Freaks adds a new, abstract dimension to a personality that was never fully defined. The details of these characters are free to be imagined by listeners.

In the end, what I originally imagined as an improbable possibility—a rock and jazz mosaic built on the contemporary frameworks of house, hip-hop, breaks, and drum and bass—was realized beyond my expectations. I sincerely hope you enjoy the album and that it rouses your curiosity toward the art that inspires you. I also hope that if you are a member of Steely Dan, you don’t sue me because I really like you and I have a baby.