Steve Albini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Steve Albini
Albini on stage in 2006
Background information
Born	July 22, 1962 Pasadena, California
Genre(s)	Indie rock
Occupation(s)	Engineer Producer Musician
Instrument(s)	Vocals Guitar
Associated acts	Big Black Rapeman Shellac

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.

Contents 1 Early life 2 As an artist 2.1 Big Black (1982-1987) 2.2 Rapeman (1987-1988) 2.3 Shellac (1992 -present) 3 Recording work 4 Other 5 References 6 External links

[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. He took bass lessons in high school for one week and started playing in bands; playing with the Missoula band Stations for about six months. While growing up in Montana, he only found a few bands he deemed worthy of listening to, including; Television, Suicide, Wire and Killing Joke.

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 E-mu 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), Scott Indrisek, 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] 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 1,500 to 2,000 albums. Artists that Albini has worked with include Pixies, Failure, 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, Dead Man Ray, The Jesus Lizard, Made Out of Babies, The Breeders, Pegboy, Poster Children, High on Fire, Fugazi, F-Minus, Leftöver Crack, Slint, Page and Plant, Superchunk, Urge Overkill, Unearthly Trance, The Wedding Present, Zao, Joanna Newsom and Gogol Bordello.

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 by the label during the recording of Nirvana's In Utero^{[attribution needed]}).

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 at different times; 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 the Songs About Fucking CD: "the future belongs to the analog loyalists. fuck digital". This quote is absent on all Vinyl pressings of the album.

[edit] References

• Albini, 1993. "The problem with music". In The Baffler, vol. 5 and reprinted both in Maximum RocknRoll #133 and in Downhill Battle (en español) [1]. Commonly circulated with the title "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked".
• Michael Azerrad, 2001. Our Band Could Be Your Life. Little Brown, ISBN 0-316-78753-1.
• Andrew Young, 2004. Albini laments age of over-production. MTSU Sidelines Online. Article based on a lecture Albini gave to the Audio Engineering Society at Middle Tennessee State University.
• Albini, 1983. [2] Matter, Vol. 1, No. 1, January 1983; the first press for Albini's Big Black.

[edit] External links

• Three Pandering Sluts the transcript of a stormy exchange from 1994 provoked in the letters page of the Chicago Reader, where Albini accuses music critic Bill Wyman of being a recording industry stooge.
• Onion AV Club Interview
• An interview in which Albini outlines his criteria for accepting offers to record musicians.
• Electrical Audio Steve Albini's recording studio.
• WNUR 89.3 FM the radio station Albini worked at during his time as a student at Northwestern University.
• Lecture at Mid-Tennessee State Universityvideo of Steve Albini giving lecture to Mid-Tennessee State University audio class
• Steve Albini - Sound Engineer Extraordinaire Article about Steve Albini in Sound On Sound magazine
• Steve Albini's Forum on prosoundweb.com Steve Albini moderates this forum on prosoundweb.com and is posting there under the username "electrical"

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