Steve Albini

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Steve Albini (born July 22, 1962, Pasadena, California) is an influential singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black and Rapeman and is still a member of Shellac. He is founder and owner of the company Electrical Audio, which operates two recording studios in Chicago.

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[edit] Early life

In his youth, Albini's family moved often, before settling in Missoula, Montana in 1980. The activities of bored teenagers in rural Missoula provided much inspiration for later Albini-penned songs. While recovering from a broken leg, Albini began playing bass guitar. According to Thrill Jockey's Looking for a Thrill, Albini first became exposed to punk rock by a schoolmate on a bus and proceeded to purchase every Ramones recording available.

After high school, Albini moved to Evanston, Illinois, to attend college at Northwestern University. In the Chicago area, Albini was active as a writer in local zines such as Matter (and later the Boston zine Forced Exposure), covering the then nascent punk rock scene, gaining a reputation for iconoclasm and outspokenness that continues to this day. Around this time he began recording groups.

[edit] As an artist

[edit] Big Black (1982-1987)

In 1982 Albini formed Big Black with Jeff Pezzati (Naked Raygun), with Santiago Durango joining shortly thereafter. The trio (along with a Roland drum machine credited as "Roland") released three EPs. Pezzati was later replaced on bass by Dave Riley, with whom the group recorded two sparse albums: Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987), as well as several more EPs and singles. Heavily influenced by PiL, Killing Joke, Wire and Gang of Four they gained a reputation for confrontation, sarcasm and abrasiveness, breaking up in 1987 on the eve of the release of their second album.

[edit] Rapeman (1987-1988)

Albini went on to form the controversially titled Rapeman in 1988, with former members of Scratch Acid; Rey Washam (formerly of Didjits), and David Wm. Sims (later of The Jesus Lizard). They broke up after release of a single EP (Budd) and album (Two Nuns and a Pack Mule). They also had a 7-inch on the Sub Pop Singles Club.

[edit] Shellac (1992 -present)

Albini formed Shellac in 1992. With fellow producers Bob Weston (formerly of Volcano Suns), and Todd Trainer (of Rifle Sport, Brick Layer Cake), they released three EPs before three angular, minimalist and typically cranky albums: At Action Park (1994), Terraform (1998), 1000 Hurts (2000). All were released, as before, on vinyl, as well as CD. Shellac has confirmed at live shows that they will release a new record, titled Excellent Italian Greyhound in early 2007.

[edit] As a lyricist

As a lyricist, Albini demonstrates an interest in the seamier side of life, writing lyrics describing inter-personal injustice, dehumanization and personal crises, often written from the perspective of a central character and underpinned with abundant grim humour.

Songs on The Hammer Party include lyrics about an attack dog trained to attack only black people; its intro features a sampled recording of a speaker at a white-power rally. Atomizer, meanwhile, opens with the song "Jordan, Minnesota", which assumes as fact the rumours about the town of the title, that some of the townspeople ran a paedophile ring using their own children. Albini's well-known inclination to assume the worst of people may have led him far astray here: Despite the moral panic which followed the allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse (and which Big Black's song very well may have helped spread), the allegations were in the end proved false.

allmusic's Stuart Mason writes [1]:

In one widely-quoted statement defending the song in the fanzine cDc #84, Albini succinctly said "It's not like we're trying to make any great statement or anything. I think it's just pretty obvious -- people shouldn't be fucking their kids." This is undeniably true, but it could also be argued that people shouldn't write songs accusing other people of same without substantial proof, and as a result, "Jordan, Minnesota" is a difficult, repulsive song to listen to for reasons entirely opposite to those Albini doubtless intended.:

Whatever you think of Albini's responsibilities as a journalist when casting lyrics to paper, his words are undeniably much like his personality: bitter, ironic and violent. His critics sometimes miss the irony, and he has from time to time been subject to allegations of racism and misogyny.

[edit] Recording work

See List of Steve Albini's recording projects for a chronological list of Albini's recording work

He is currently most active as a record producer, but he dislikes the term and prefers to be credited as recording engineer (if the record company insists on any credit at all; Albini is comfortable with receiving no credit). Contrary to common practice, Albini does not receive royalties for anything he records or mixes: he charges a flat daily fee when recording at his own facility, but uses an admittedly somewhat arbitrary sliding scale when recording elsewhere.

Albini estimates that he has engineered the recording of over 1,000 albums. Artists that Albini has worked with include Pixies, The Frames, Nirvana, Nina Nastasia, PJ Harvey, Low, Blues Explosion, Mogwai, Bush, Cheap Trick, Neurosis, Zeni Geva, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mclusky, Fred Schneider, The Auteurs, Mono, The Jesus Lizard, The Breeders, High On Fire, Fugazi, F-Minus, Leftöver Crack, Slint, Page and Plant, Superchunk, Urge Overkill, The Wedding Present, Zao, and (most recently) Joanna Newsom.

In Albini's opinion, putting producers in charge of recording sessions often destroys records, while the role of the recording engineer is to solve problems in capturing the sound of the musicians, not to threaten the artists' control over their product. In 2004, Albini summarized his opinions regarding record producers: "It always offended me when I was in the studio and the engineer or the assumed producer for the session would start bossing the band around. That always seemed like a horrible insult to me. The band was paying money for the privilege of being in a recording studio, and normally when you pay for something, you get to say how it's done. So, I made up my mind when I started engineering professionally that I wasn't going to behave like that." (Young 2004).

Nevertheless, albums recorded by Albini bear a distinctive sonic signature. In Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad describes Albini's work on Pixies' Surfer Rosa, but the description applies to many of Albini's efforts: "The recordings were both very basic and very exacting: Albini used few special effects; got an aggressive, often violent guitar sound; and made sure the rhythm section slammed as one." (Azerrad, 344) Another Albini trademark is his habit of generally keeping vocals "low in the mix," or much less prominent than is usual in rock music. (This is said to have been a point of contention during the recording of Nirvana's In Utero).

On In Utero one can find a typical example of Albini's recording practices. Common practice in popular music is to record each instrument on a separate track and then editing the pieces together; see multi-track recording for more information. However, Albini prefers to record "live" as much as possible: the musicians perform together as a group in the same room, and the ensemble is recorded with microphones. Albini places particular importance on the selection and use of microphones in achieving a desired sound, including painstaking placement of different microphones at certain points around a room to best capture ambience and other qualities.

[edit] Other

Additionally, he is famous (or notorious) in the indie world as an opinionated pundit on the music industry and on trends in indie music, beginning with his earliest writing for zines such as Matter and Forced Exposure, to his commentary on the poor ethics of big record labels, and how their practices filter through to the independent labels. He has been a strong supporter of labels who have tried to break the mold, especially Touch and Go Records, with whom all of his bands have released recordings. He is also an adamant supporter of analog recording over digital, as can be evidenced by a quote on the back cover of Songs About Fucking: "the future belongs to the analog loyalists. fuck digital".

David Gedge of The Wedding Present was allegedly punched by Courtney Love because of his association with Albini.

In addition to his music and recording expertise, Albini is a huge baseball fan, currently supporting the Chicago White Sox, having previously rooted for the Minnesota Twins. He is a journalism graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he worked as a radio DJ for the WNUR Rock Show.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Albini, Steve
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American record engineer
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Pasadena, California
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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