Steps Ahead was the first US release by the group Steps Ahead – having previously recorded three albums for the Japanese market as Steps. Released in 1983, it met with a lukewarm response – Downbeat only awarding the album three-and-a-half stars, with no mention at all in The New York Times or Village Voice. Part of the problem was that critics at the time had no idea what to call their music. Steps Ahead's sophisticated ad hoc compositional forms and general preference of non ‘jazz swing’ in 4/4 (though acknowledged in ‘Northern Cross’), seemed beyond the ken of most critics. Today, Steps Ahead is seen as one of the most influential recordings of the 1980s – take the composition ‘Pools’, for example, one of the band's most popular pieces. Though it's in 4/4, it does not comply with the traditional 4/4 swing feel and though the form is an AAB structure, with the ‘A’ section's 20 bars and the ‘B’ section's 14 bars, solos are unexpectedly based on a repeated four bar vamp. From the latin-inspired rhythms of ‘Islands’ to the ballad ‘Skyward Bound’, the sophistication of form and content was far removed from the theme-solos-theme trap into which so much jazz had slumped – fusion or acoustic. While the album is also notable for the emergence of Brecker as a major soloist in his own right, in truth each composition seems to draw the very best, both individually and collectively, from each member of this one-of-its-kind ensemble. Exceptionally well recorded by Bruce Lundvall's newly formed Elektra Musician label, this 20th century album was so ahead of its time that jazz in the 21st century still hasn't quite caught up, either in concept or execution – just ask UK jazz greats Tommy Smith and Tim Garland.