{"id":8,"date":"2006-02-12T17:25:59","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T22:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=8"},"modified":"2024-07-04T09:31:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T15:31:17","slug":"godlike-genius-1-steve-albini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/godlike-genius-1-steve-albini\/","title":{"rendered":"Godlike Genius #1: Steve Albini"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years back I heard Motherfucker=Redeemer (Part 1) <\/em>by Godspeed! You Black Emperor<\/a> on 3wk.com.\u00c2\u00a0 I – no doubt like everyone who hears this for the first time – was blown away by the sheer intensity<\/span> of it. I bought the album it was taken from (Yanqui U.X.O.<\/em>) and scoured the liner notes for some clue as to the people behind it (can’t do that<\/span> with a download!). G!YBE turns out to be a relatively-anonymous Canadian collective (the same ones behind the equally-absurdly-monickered Silver Mount Zion<\/a> – billed on one release as The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band with Choir), and the only name I recognised was the recording engineer, Steve Albini.<\/p>\n

Albini was a name on the ’80s punk\/indie scene, stirring up controversy with Big Black (by titling their second album Songs About Fucking<\/em>) and his charmingly-named band Rapeman. More famously, he worked on Nirvana’s In Utero<\/em>, and a few other ‘big name’ albums. So far so much abrasive guitar-fuelled anger, and a far cry from G!YBE.<\/p>\n

Not long after this, I heard My Father My King<\/em> by the mighty Mogwai<\/a> (again, on 3wk.com). This is a thunderous 21 minutes of (now, much-imitated but never bettered) intense slow-build to an all-out guitar-fuelled shitstorm that simply has to be heard to be believed. It is a truly astounding piece of music that defies categorization, and remains one of my all-time top ‘tunes’. A cursory glance through the liner notes revealed that it was “recorded by” one Mr. Steve Albini…<\/p>\n

Fast-forward three or four years, and an interesting track (Blanket Over The Sun<\/em>) by an artist I hadn’t heard of called Shannon Wright<\/a> catches my attention. The music was very subdued, being largely just one woman and her piano, but at the same time was very intense, very brooding. Again, I ordered the CD, flipped through the liner notes, and sure enough, there in the small-print was “…recorded by Steve Albini…”. Astounding!<\/p>\n

So I did a bit more research into this Zelig-like character in my ongoing musical education. And the more I’ve unearthed, the more I’ve come to admire him. Albini turns out to be a very principled man, which initially seems to go against the grain of his punk roots, but is probably borne of the punk trust no-one \/ DIY ethic. Based in Chicago (because it’s a “manufacturing city so it’s easy to get things made”), Albini runs a couple of studios (Electrical Audio<\/a>) that lean heavily on analog equipment and ‘real’ instruments. He sees himself as a recording engineer as opposed to a ‘producer’ and charges a flat hourly fee for his work, rather than a cut of any subsequent royalties (so ‘commerciality’ is clearly not a factor in his choice of clients or projects). He also has a deep distrust of the music industry, as evidenced by his much-circulated essay\/rant “The Problem With Music<\/a>“, which is refreshing coming from someone who makes their living within the industry!<\/p>\n

He also obviously has a high work ethic, having recorded\/engineered in excess of 1,000 albums. A cursory check reveals that I have about a dozen of these. These dozen are pretty varied musically, but they all share something I can’t quite put my finger on – maybe it’s the intensity, the emotional clarity, or just the honesty of the performance. I don’t know. But I do know that Albini fails to disappoint. I might not necessarily now go off and invest in the entire Rapeman back-catalogue, but if I see him credited on an album I do buy, I know I’m in for a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years back I heard Motherfucker=Redeemer (Part 1) by Godspeed! You Black Emperor on 3wk.com.\u00c2\u00a0 I – no doubt like everyone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-music-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}