Prayer to God is the one that ultimately sold me on his vocals. It's a real performance.

Lots of rules for being a fan of albini and music. Sounds exhausting being a dick

It can get pretty hard.

spike.

Throw 'em in at the deep end.

I love that song.

In fact, it was my introduction to Shellac - a bandmate played it for me and it blew my mind.

I think I take it for granted that anyone who dislikes the dude because of some perceived musical/ideological divide has already read The Problem With Music, but that's probably dumb. Suffice it to say that I agree with almost every word of his influential essay, as well as his more optimistic 2014 update.

If he had any sort of ideology that could be articulated outside of a tweet thread, this would be it.

i'd still like to know exactly what it is Albini does as a produce...*ahem*...audio engineer.

what does he do? does he touch knobs, etc on the board, or does he sit there?

He does all the technical stuff and will call to attention to important performance details like "your bass player flubbed a note." What he is diametrically opposed to doing is anything remotely subjective, i.e. he won't ever say "one more time, with feeling!" or "let's put a synth pad here" or "have you considered double tracking your vocals?" Anything that might impart his own taste or preference into the musician's art is off-limits.

Think of him as the most technically proficient, creatively objective documentary film maker you could imagine. He'll record your shit and make it sound perfect, and at the end of the process, there should be no identifying marks of his presence.

i just read this part of the wiki for PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, "He’s the only person I know that can record a drum kit and it sounds like you’re standing in front of a drum kit."

that's accurate.

Yeah dude, the drums on Rid of Me are amazing

effing killer interview with Steve. Thanks to strat for the link.

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/ste ... -interview

Is that really albinis account? No blue check mark

Yeah it's him. The tweet thread he made on that account was what led to the interview Trag linked earlier

Why isn't he verified

Institutional racism

I feel like if I were to have a sig here on RM it would be this Albini quote from that interview trag posted:

"The fundamental truth is that what other people think of me is their business. I’m not trying to influence their opinions of me. I’m trying to maintain a notion of myself that isn’t cruel. And if I realize that I’ve been being cruel, I need to stop — not just for the other person’s benefit, but because I’m responsible for my own behavior."

People want to assume my worldview on here a lot. Which I totally get. I do the same to others. This is the closest I've seen someone whom I don't follow or listen to often articulate a very real aspect of my actual worldview.

there's plenty more where that came from, pal