STEVE ALBINI

Powell sounds like the whitest thing ever tbh.

Big Black covered James Brown.

Also Rick James.

I suppose covering the odd r'n'b standard is still considered pretty rad in some parts:p

facebook discussion on Xhukk's page mentions that indeed Powell makes the kinda shit he might dig.

he simply couldn't simply say "yes" or "no thank you." he had to pedantically explain his decades-old grudge against music intended for dancing to a guy who likes what he does but who he had to cast as his ideological opponent. not consonant with his more avuncular role as a facilitator for younger musicians…gotta be G/B/D, I guess.

he obviously did this guy a favor by giving him a shitload of free PR, idg how this can be interpreted any other way

he gets to a) play the role of "Steve Albini" (which he clearly enjoys) and b) this guy gets a ton of attention, it's a win-win

and everyone is stupider

I'm gonna go check out electrical audio boards… I reckon he will have no opposition as such today…

why would anyone ever do that for any reason

Is this really a shitload of free PR and a ton of attention? Pretty sure Powell gets more press at this point than Albini does.

well I'd never heard of him before

(not that that's indicative of anything than my own cloistered existence)

go to electrical audio? when his stans are not sucking his dick or complaining about the 80s/90s midwest milieu having passed its prime, it can be pretty interesting, particularly from a gear perspective, which ILM doesn't rilly fuck with. they love to talk about "Tone attorneys," the lawyers who go to chicago blues bars, venerate Eric Johnson and buy paul reed smiths and rare aluminum guitars that those guys can't afford.

"why would anyone" go to EA?…xpost

oh cool a sausagefest inside a sausagefest

nah i'm being a smartass i'm sure the gear talk is great.

anyway powell is ok and also "white" in the sense that a lot of white dudes in the uk and germany are reverent about detroit and chicago, also part of a club culture of which there are many all over the world, many more in fact than there are of aging midwestern u.s. blowhard cultures.

idk about that aging midwestern US blowhards still seem to be kicking a lot of ass afaict

well I'd never heard of him before

I hadn't either and what I heard through laptop speakers while eating lunch sounded great (also in the vein of the noisy stuff Albini likes)!

he has a track called 'Wharton Tiers on Drums'

Obviously it's weird for him to go on an unsolicited rant, but perhaps he's responding to something specific in the original email. Who knows? I'm just glad that Albini's back to being predictably Albini! It got confusing there for a while, what with his cooking blog and his pro-streaming interviews!

I guess my core idea of "Albini-isms" is colored by all the homophobic shit he said in interviews in the '80s, y'know, when that was still cool.

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, October 4, 2011 10:50 AM (3 years ago)

club culture has never meant dick to me either but ymmv

there's so much music that's part of 'club culture' but also working against it that's just as noisy and underground as he wants, but who cares.

yeah, it seems like he would like it, unless nothing can change his unbending, reflexive disdain the ostensible means by which it was produced…

SA responds to on board: the guy who challenges him is not a native english speaker and so there is some mild condescension from Albini's sycophants…

http://www.electricalaudio.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=66456

"What I said is that I hate club music and culture, and always have. That's it.

I also hate the Tea Party and its culture. I hate Football and its culture. I hate the White Power movement and its culture. I hate shopping malls and their culture. I hate the Confederacy and its culture. I hate fancy restaurants and foodie culture. I hate reality TV and whatever culture it displays or inspires. I hate pop music and its culture."

can we poll steve's hates?

too many poptimists on ilxor. "i hate pop music and its culture" will win because snark

somewhere on that EA thread, albs expands on what it is that he dislikes:

I am objecting to the music and the timewasting/preening/showoff/drugging/profiteering/status-seeking/taxonomically-obsesseive/faddish/stylistically rigid/conceptually barren aspects of club culture, and again, the unbearably stupid music. If it has emancipatory potential, that would be great and I couldn't possibly object to it.

I love, for example, the way disco gave the gay community an avenue into mainstream culture and a platform for unironic flamboyance. Hated discos themselves and the much larger non-gay disco audience of silk shirt cokeheads, ditzy chicks and the upper crust having a spin. Hated it hated it hated it. That music was fucking awful. Those clubs were hell. Those people and the mob that profited off them were the fucking worst. Nice one Sylvester.

This correspondence had similar overtones, but it's about the ethics of civet poop coffee
http://sprudge.com/a-letter-from-steve-albini-39266.html

LIKES: civet poop coffee
DISLIKES: civet abuse

if anyone is in the have-opinions-for-money game and isn't too busy today there could be a good hot take fashioned out of Steve Albini and Claire Danes' respective attitudes to club culture

I like a lot of the music that Albini hates but dance clubs stress me out so I can't fault him for feeling the way he does

"What I said is that I hate club music and culture, and always have. That's it.

I also hate the Tea Party and its culture. I hate Football and its culture. I hate the White Power movement and its culture. I hate shopping malls and their culture. I hate the Confederacy and its culture. I hate fancy restaurants and foodie culture. I hate reality TV and whatever culture it displays or inspires. I hate pop music and its culture."

Man is a culture denier huh? #corbynJokes

"stylistically rigid"

says the guy who has been making the same record for the last 30 years.

Yeah, if there's ever a word that encapsulates Albini and his MO it's rigid.

I think Albini's response is pretty spot on, actually, although obviously I love a lot of dance music. He let the guy do what he wanted to do, and gave him material for a video and ad out of it to boot (albeit inadvertently). I'm just amused by the fact that it's a story that Albini hates club music and club culture: of course he does, he's got one of the most dyed-in-the-wool aesthetics of any musician ever, and he's been a crotchety old man about what he believes in since his 20s.

http://i.imgur.com/UMveCfs.jpg

he would not be kissin' up to gays in his 20s; i was there

i think there is something sorta charming about having this position in 2015

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, September 29, 2015 8:26 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? what if Billy Corgan said the same thing? ... .... ... .. .

Wonder if he also hates metal for being similarly "stylistically rigid".

probably!

albini is a smart dude but smart dudes can still have some very dumb opinions too

i do want to see bob mould and albini team up to form a rival wrestling league to billy corgan's.

Mould wrote for WCW back in its heyday

I guess I don't really understand when we get surprised by stuff like this, I mean of course Albini wouldn't like dance music anymore than I would be shocked if I read an interview with BB King and he would slag off modern pop or when Keith Richards said he didn't like Metallica. A lot of people who have done great work are very tunnel vision and I don't necessirly think that's a bad thing, opposed to people like I dunno Beck who have super wide ranging influences

being miopic can advantages

Or like if you went to Chief Keef and said hey man you like Mission of Burma??? What's up? Cmoon man get with it

xp who is surprised by it? It's just an amusing interaction.

i do want to see bob mould and albini team up to form a rival wrestling league to billy corgan's.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, September 30, 2015 12:57 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ill empty my bank account to make this happen

did anyone look at this? it was so funny!

this mostly made me lol but i'm sure someone will find a way to empathize with this well-told tale of SA's overzealous hero worship
http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/marissa-paternoster-screaming-females-talks/

― La Lechera, Sunday, August 9, 2015 7:18 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

That is funny.

Powell doesn't seem upset about it

http://thequietus.com/articles/18897-powell-albini-interview