Steve Albini Goes Off on Sonic Youth
 

I found this through pitchfork. God I hate pitchfork.

This feels like Steve said a lot more (he is a Rambler... see what I did there?), but the interviewer only picked out the meaty bits...

fair comment, I think.

What he says is makes sense to me. Doesn't mean I agree with it, but I can totally see where he coming from..

Thanks for that.

Has nothing to do with the thread really, but I met Albini about 8 years ago and he was the nicest person ever.

Isn't that exactly the same response he's given for the past 20 years?

I'll never understand how someone can not consider movies as an art form.

About the sy bits, I dunno, I think that he "should" play that alternative history game a bit, if you think something was not good I guess this implies that you also think things would have been better without that thing happening, no?

By the way, yeah, no big news, and I like the fact that he can "discern" some choices from the music/people behind them.

If you don't agree with someone else's particular ideas/actions it doesn't mean you have to hate him. They'll toast to 2011 together haha.

I just think its stupid. If Albini is denouncing certain career moves, then he is no better than the mainstream.

Yeah, saying what you think is so mainstream, eh :o..

no, im saying that albini seems to have a formula just like the mainstream does in order to make or break a respectable band, hence him being no better than the mainstream...

Why cant people just like what they like?

interesting read, thanks moshe.

blah blah blah

he makes a valid point but he still sounds like an elitist prick

Henry has it right, as usual.

This

It's only friggin music for petesakes. This indy/mainstream argument is to me silly. I like what I like and I don't care how I get it as long as I get. Satan's got it right he is an elitist prick. He sure makes a ton of money off of other people's sweat yet he has the nerve to get on the case of others who are doing the same. He's a jerk in my book.

for fucking sure it makes him better. What you call his "formula" is a process of recording which captures on magnetic tape the near-exact sound of a band playing LIVE. It is infinitely better than the mainstreams "formula" of over-processed, lowest-common denominator decision making.

an Albini recorded band will sound full and thick and raw, just as they do live. most mainstream bands sound like fucking plastic on record ad live need a lot of extraneous effects and musicians to try and replicate the bullshit mainstream producers saddle songs with these days.

all things are NOT relative.

How does he make a TON of money? he charges young bands less than $4,000 (edit) to record entire albums. he provides bands with free studio space.
albini is a fucking maverick!

I agree with most of what he said, and if you read between the lines of thrustons and lee's and Kim's words about Geffen after they left, they see it too. Geffen used them as bait to pull in other acts who were them used abused and discarded just as major labels always do and have done. This also allowed major labels to go wild buying up tons of indie labes wholesale, rebranding them, and using them as fake-ass "indie" extensions of their massive conglomerates.
the sonics have also hinted many times at how right away theyr were disappointed by geffen and their decision to jump to them. They were glad that the back catalog got distribution, but that came at a big price. They admit that they had to react to the whims of the geffen execs in record promotion, the songs used on albums, marketing, etc.
that shit all sucks.

and I for one hated hated hated seeing sonic youth on shit ass gossip girl and all the other super mainstream bullshit they ahve done.

No one is perfect though, and SY are still the greatest band in the world to me.

I think he's a bit of an old twat, but there is some validity there. The whole SY-becomes-middling-indie-rock in the 90s thing, hanging around with Pavement, palling with Chloe Sevigny probably would have struck me as a little odd, too. But I think he's being too binaristic. I understand as a professional he doesn't make it his job to assess if a band he records is good to him or not since he's only interested in getting their desired sound, but for fuck sakes, you've produced Bush and Scott Weiland! You moan about this rather outdated underground/mainstream binary that is dying post-internet and you produce crap like that? Blech.

I also do not rate movies as an art form.

"art" that takes 20 producers, 300 crew and staff people, 20 actors, dozens of editors, cinematgraphers, etc is not art. it is ENGINEERING.
of course some movies are art. Of course some coffee stais are art as well.
that does not amke the media of film an art form.

I see it as a craft. 99% of movie making is not creative at all. thescreenwriter is creative. the actors themselves are creative. everyone else, from the director to the cinematographer to the lighting guy to the editor are NOT creating anything. they are putting parts created by others together to make a cohesive whole. while admirable and difficult, it is as "ART" as building a new toilet is.

and this is the truest shit of all

albini has stated that he produces/records big name bands wo he can squeeze their record labels for as much money as possible so he can then record a new unknown band for $2000. dig? does that not make sense?

Eh, it just jives with all the other purist dribble that comes out of his mouth. But point taken. Also - this conversation was had already by thousands in NINETEEN-NINETY. It is now TWENTY-TEN.

Also, fuck his views on fashion. Yes, fashion is filled with awful fucking people, yes some of it plays to supreme vapidity and classism and superficiality and all of that shit, but being that anti-fashion is just as inane of an ideology as being rabidly consumerist with all the latest trends. Style isn't really about fashion. Fashion is merely a component of it and so what if some of us like to invest a bit more time into the way we present ourselves? But I've read before that he hates 'image' of any kind (I dispute that he doesn't have an image - I think Big Black yr still dealing with images if you proclaim to be so anti-image) and despises camp of any kind. So it makes sense. More tired grandpa talk. This dude is still living in a Forced Exposure zine from the 80s.

that can be said of any media, really. you're just using people to put together an original idea. it's just like using paint, tools, paint brushes, paper, a typewriter.. etc. it's just the 'tools' you're using are people. capable of developing or feeling all range of emotions which can most likely ruin the idea of the movie.

i'm not defending the slew of shitty movies that have graced us with their presence over the years but like all things, movie making can be corrupted. but i wouldn't say film isn't an art form. that's a bit extreme.

While he makes some valid points, he just comes across as deeply hypocritical for some of the reasons you've mentioned. Perhaps he should realize that those good points would have stronger resonance if someone with a fresher approach and none of the dodgy cv entries made them. Or maybe he could just shut up, concentrate on making awesome music, and produce less rubbish like Manic Street Preachers.

Riiiiiight. And OJ has stated he didn't do it.

Oscar Wilde said "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." ;)

There's only two types of music, the good and the bad. Sonic Youth always did what they wanted. And the Albini sound is just another sound out there, some people like it some prefer something more complex.

Steve responds to the responses on the Electrical Audio boards:
http://www.electrical.com/phpBB3/vie...17125#p1217011
http://www.electrical.com/phpBB3/vie...17125#p1217034

Oscar Wilde loved smoking dope and sometimes talking shit too. Not that it's a bad thing, but he's on record for pointing it out himself.

people are the least of the tools used in movies. movies are constructed like engineering projects, for efficiency of storytelling. a great film can be a work of art, like a great piece of pottery, but most films are craft, utilitarian craft, like most pottery. pretty, enjoyable but not art.

just a personal view. being a director in a movie is more like being a CEO of a business than it is about creativity. That is why the truly creative directors are not used much in "hollywood" for they seek to express something instead of making an efficient money making movie.
I feel the performances in film are art. the films themselves? not so much.

you must not know much about Albini then man.

Yeah, but to me the logical conclusion to what you're saying is that nobody is able to make art in their spare time if they have a day job that engages with corporate culture, or they can try to make it but their work is automatically invalid.

99% (or whatever figure we pluck out of the air) of any art form is bullshit probably, but then bullshit is subjective. i think it's easy to make an arguement for marking something down as being craft when it is made as a product with the sole intention of making money*, but then just because it takes a team of any number of people to realise the vision of a few that doesn't discount the finished work from being art. I'm just speculating but Michaelangelo probably had hundreds of people working for him on the sistine chapel, but that doesn't mean automatically mean it's one thing or the other. And really beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and I think in these situations you have to say anything is art if other people say it is because for all we know Simon Cowell's current peice of televisual effluvia could be profoundly moving and touch the souls of some people despite how succinctly we would bag it as crap, or craft.

*also, i quite doubt that whoever is at the helm of making a crappy product type film/record/book would neccesarily view it that way, even if it's totally commercial and banal for all i know that guy who directed the transformers film and armageddon could be persuing some kind of hellish vision of artistry.

hahaha

come on T&B. trying to make art, or setting out to make art, does NOT make the end product automatically art. modernist relativism needs to die.

art is a specific thing, not a general catch-all for any endeavour that may or may not affect people emotionally.

Rob, try telling that to people whose talent gets regularly castrated by having to pay ever increasing bills. I like it how you put it, but reality doesn't take these things into account at all.

well what does and who decides? i mean i hate post-modern bullshit with a burning passion but some people love that stuff and it baffles and alientates me that they do but what else can i do but tollerate and accept that their view on a particular thing is something i will never be able to relate to or understand and just end up having to allow it, and hope that in the future people will see that i was right all along.