September 02, 2004

Steve Albini gives a talk on analog vs. digital and other audio engineering questions (.mov, really long)
If you're not familiar with his engineering (most famously: Nirvana's "In Utero" and the Pixies's "Surfer Rosa") or his bands (previously Big Black and Rapeman, currently Shellac) then you've might've heard of Albini's infamous essay, "The Problem With Music" on why artists in the biz are usually facked.

A lot of people like to label Albini a cranky lunatic, but he makes a whole lotta sense in the vid. And he'll apparently record any band great or small for little more than cost at his fricking sweet studio.

posted by sutureself 19 years ago
  • *fap fap fap* I <3 Steve Albini.
  • Arse-kicking recording engineer. No doubt about.
  • The talk is more about recording engineering in general rather than analog vs. digital. He actually only mentions analog vs. digital briefly twice and actually manages to make a good, concise argument the second time around. You have to wait until about the last 5 minutes of the movie for that though.
  • "the problem with music"...I dunno, but it just seems weird that you have all these different artists on MTV in "cribs", with like kick ass houses and such... I doubt they can afford that on a -14,000 budget. So someone is lying!
  • Steve Albini ain't talking about the huge, multi-million selling artists in his essay. He's talking about your buddies, who got together some pretty good songs, signed to Fuckshit Records Ltd and released an album which sells a couple of thousand copies to their buddies and the guys who liked them when they supported Modest Mouse this one time.
  • I'm not an idiot, I'm just breaking down boundaries of grammar and tense.
  • Wow, that is incredibly cheap studio time. Gotta get me to Chi-ca-go!
  • The TapeOp threads (1 and 2) about this lecture have a whole lot (read: more then you probably want to know) of information on the digital-versus-analog storage issue...
  • Also, this article by Courtney Love pretty much backs up Albini's claims about how bands get screwed by major labels. I don't think they're talking about musicians on the level of, say, Jay-Z, think more along the lines of, for example, Semisonic...
  • I was with her until she accused My Bloody Valentine of having "no imagination". Courtney Love. Accusing MBV. Of lacking imagination.
  • Courtney Love did used to fuck Julian Cope, though. I'd wager you'd need a pretty good imagination to enjoy that
  • Truly a great great link, cheers sutureself
  • So someone is lying! A lot of times, it's the artists on Cribs, who rent the houses
  • Blaise: Not necessarily. For starters, some artists do get phenominally rich - either because (like Bowie et al) they're smart and hold enough that they got marginally better deals back in the day, and jeep their money. Many make good money out of product endorsements and the like - fashion lines, that sort of thing. They don't make any actual money on their career as musicians, they make it one parleying that into selling products they get a better cut of (although labels have now wised up and started demanding a take of that, too). Finally, labels will buy stuff for artists, just like they do recording time, at inflated prices and so on, to keep them sweet. Like shawnj says, the houses are like the tour buses and all the other stuff to creat an illusion of success, so the artist doesn't ask, "hey, my records make all this money, why does my cut evaporate?"
  • the thing is that the industry is so powerful that musicians have little leverage unless they're "hot" and have multiple offers. so they hand out these terrible contracts.
  • I was in a band that got up to the last hurdle in getting a recording contract with a major label. (We were, in the end, rejected directly by the boss cocky. Not commercial enough. Which is fine by me.) At the time, I was pretty disappointed, because I really wanted to go for it. Now I'm glad, for so many reasons. Like not being owned by a multinational, for one. And not being in hock up to my ears, for two. The lifestyle's also pretty disgusting. Play for an hour a day, spend twenty-three hours waiting to do it.
  • Although I did enjoy seeing my picture in all those magazines, I admit it. And I met loads of people, some of whom were women. I'll stop now.
  • what was your band wolof? :)
  • I just had a google for it and found nothing, so I might just let it lie there. I am, however, listed in "Who's Who in Rock Music in Australia", so if you've ever had email from me and you own that book, you can probably work it out.
  • what magazines, wolof? :)
  • Australian ones, I'm afraid. RAM. On The Street. Um, a bunch of other ephemera I forget now. But the newspapers, too ... The Age, SMH, The Advertiser (sorry!), etc. etc.
  • I ain't claiming that you can't play the system the way the system plays you, just that most recording artists are artists and not marketing managers. I know that if I ever got a record contract (about as likely as the Pope revealing himself to be a crimefighting ninja with superhuman powers of deduction) I'd be chewed up, spat out and working shelves at Waitrose within about three months.
  • Wolof=Danii Minogue
  • Wolof=Danii Minogue *waves to dng, turns on psychotic smile*