[Glice]

Oh good, here's a good place to unload some vitriol.

tl;dr: Fuck Steve Albini, again.

As ever of late, I'm gliding through, so this is the compressed version.

1) Recording is an artform. Performing is an artform. Steve Albini privileges the latter to the behest of the former in the context of the former. For which read: His idea of recording is that it should sound like a 'live band' in an era when most music is recording-first. His recording techniques are a perspective until he starts talking.

2) Bands who are good at being live bands often don't know about the nuances of recording, which is a very different thing. Albini has made deficient records for these people, frequently. An oversight if he's doing Ceilidh or be-bop; he's doing rock, which has the recording bang in the middle of its purpose.

3) 'I'm just an engineer' is a cop-out. The false modesty shit negates any responsibility he has for the recording. He doesn't just put mics in a room, he makes decisions and those decisions have an enormous influence upon the outcome of the record. Two false modesties, in fact: first that he just transcribes the 'live' sound, second that he has no responsibility for that transcription. There's modesty and there's damaging bands and washing his hands.

4) Many of his records sound like total shit. How do you fuck up the Stooges?

5) His idea of recording comes from a very specific era of 80s punk and punk-ethos. Even the people who operate in that narrow era are also aware of what happened afterwards.

6) It is 2013 and he's still analogue. Which is an exceptionally niche area. Which is also making a virtue of an authenticity that means precisely fuck all to punk rock.

7) Continual and unrelenting sexism that isn't 'ironic' and never has been. It belongs in the 1970s.

8) For every record that survives the various exchanges/ trade-offs between his atavistic techniques, convoluted understanding of what rock is and his false humility and still manages to be passable, there are 10 or 20 records which were shit.

9) Many of those shit records sunk smaller bands.

10) Acting like his reputation isn't something he's interested in does nothing about the fact he has a reputation; shit records are blamed on the bands, doubly so because he's at pains to deflect his responsibilities onto the bands.

11) He is a whiney motherfucker who has made precisely one good record in 30 years, and half a good one about 15 years ago.

12) For all his criticism of industry-capital he's never apparently done anything except operate in the manner of a contractor. That is, he'll cross the picket line but never believe himself to be 'part of' the industry.

12) When organising ATP, there were a pitiful minority of British bands involved, in spite of the festival being in the UK.

13) His records (to repeat) sound like shit.