Punks's producer

As hotpress breaks open the 25th anniversary bubbly, punk has yet again been raising its nostalgic navel-gazing head with Lydon, McLaren et al lining up to pontificate on “their Jubilee”. Rather than relentlessly ruminating on the punk phenomenon as a distinct and fixed entity, it is an important and illuminating exercise to appreciate how this colossal shockblast of self-articulation mutated into countless post-punk shapes and sounds, ripping up every rulebook to be found within its noisy sense-shuddering wake.

For all the jingoism, the flag-waving of UK punk is a small, over-rated part of a much larger picture. America spawned numerous variants of punk, including the New York Dolls, The Ramones, X, The Dream Syndicate and the Dead Kennedys to name a tiny handful. Artists like Pere Ubu and Suicide hinted at a more oblique, creatively boundless terrain. While the classic punk rockers lent boredom and alienation a sexy guitar pop sheen, subsequent artists engaged in degradation in a far more direct and disturbing fashion. During the ’80s, the multifarious versions of punk in the US became darker, more subversive and nihilistic. It became a rich and prolific time for the American underground, with artists like Killdozer, The Swans and Sonic Youth creating wildly divergent, thrilling and terrifying music seeped in the menace and malcontent of an American Nightmare.

Big Black peered into the hidden dirty, violent and degrading secrets of Middle America. What’s more, they sounded like nothing else on earth. Initially based in Evanstown, Illinois, their debut release the Lungs EP in 1983 was virtually a solo project from fanzine writer and Northwestern University student Steve Albini, layering his scorching sheets of minimal guitar scrapes over a drum machine at a time when such a method appeared futuristic. After a number of line-up changes and another EP, Albini was joined by Dave Riley on bass and Dave Santiago on guitar. Tracks like ‘Cables’, dealing with disaffected youth looking for kicks in an abattoir, set out a stall which was to produce some of the most searing and disturbing statements in post-punk. Never one to build self-mythology. Albini referred to them a few years later as simply, “Three goofballs playing a slightly bent version of rock music.” Today, his brief description is, “Metal Urbain minus Cabaret Voltaire.”

In 1986, Big Black produced their calling card and definitive statement – Atomizer. Thematically it broached the desperate entertainments of small town America – child abuse, self-mutilation, wholesale corruption and all manners of depraved and disturbing activity, a little like David Lynch without the comfort of the dreamy and surreal bits but much, much louder. ‘Jordan, Minnesota’ pointed to a child abuse ring in the town of the same name. ‘Kerosene’, their best known moment, was a seething treatment of teenage sex and pyromania as urban pastimes.

Big Black’s career was prolific but short-lived. When Santiago Durango decided to go to law school, Albini made the decision to disband the group. They released their most notorious and most acclaimed record Songs About Fucking in 1987 – the sound of three men running out of time and stamping out their own indelible sonic mark.

Albini went on to form the shortly lived and controversial Rapeman. Embroiled in a storm of controversy, pickets were commonplace at their few shows and they split up after releasing the Two Nuns And A Pack Of Mule LP. This blistering album featured the vegetarian baiting ‘Steak and Black Onions’ (“Why don’t you stuff it in/You plant-eating pussy”) and the instrumental ‘Kim Gordon’s Panties’ (Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon frequently threw her panties at Steve onstage). When asked whether he now regards Rapeman as an appropriate moniker, Steve replies: “Sure. I gather you don’t, or you wouldn’t be asking the question. There have been better names – Mustache comes to mind – and worse ones, like Men Without Hats, but it’s still just a band name and I can’t get worked up about it.”

Albini became increasingly involved in production, or as a recording engineer as he preferred to define the role, because he hated the concept of dictating a recording and then taking a royalty cut in addition to a fee. He once quipped: “When I think of a producer I think of one of those industry losers with a beard and a ponytail sitting in a chair telling the band what to do.”

Frustrated with the lack of good, cheap studios to record his own bands, he founded his own in Chicago. The artists who used his services read like a who’s who of musical luminaries: The Pixies, Nirvana, The Breeders, The Wedding Present, Tad, The Jesus Lizard, Cheap Trick, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and Low. His specialisation is for analogue recording, capturing a band’s raw sound, the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa being the best known and celebrated example where the sound literally jumps out of the speakers. More recently, he has been the engineer of choice for Irish acts Berkeley, Adrian Crowley, Steve Fanagan, The Frames and Joan of Arse. He works every day and is one of the promptest respondents to email I’ve ever encountered, and that’s not even allowing for any Transatlantic time difference.

After the demise of Rapeman, Albini formed his most exciting musical project yet – the awesome Shellac. Another power trio, Albini’s colleagues are Bob Weston, a member of the Volcano Suns who recorded early Pavement and the incendiary drummer Todd Trainer, to my mind one of the finest drummers I’ve ever seen live and only equalled by Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and former Therapy? drummer Fyfe Ewing.

In addition to recording and releasing a string of fine 7” records and three acclaimed and exquisitely packaged albums – At Action Park (1994), Terraform (1998) and 1,000 Hurts (2000), Shellac curated the illustrious All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival 2002 in Camber Sands, South East England. A bumper value for money alternative to the branded monotony of overpriced music festivals, admission for the three-day bash was a reasonable £100, which included chalet accommodation. Unlike most beer-sponsored soirees, the bar was open until dawn. There was no segregation between artist and performer as fan and artist mingled freely at the shows.

“It was an overwhelming thing, in every sense of the word,” Steve recalls.” I had the time of my life and I saw many amazing things. ATP is a unique experience and is a national treasure. I pray it doesn’t go away or become a cheap parody of itself.”

Last September, ATP founder Barry Hogan was asked why there weren’t artists like the Strokes appearing at the festival. He dubbed them, “Nothing but a bunch of rich kids looking like Menswear” who were “trying to recreate the sounds of punk club CBGB’s circa ‘78 without the wit or charm of the legends that made that place”. He continued to say Shellac have, “Far more relevancy today, they are still making great music and have been an inspiration to so many.”

“I don’t know anything about the Strokes, so I can’t comment on what kind of people they are,” Albini responds. “The way they have been trumpeted in the promotional wing of the music business is of course an appalling intrusion, a cheap grab at the public’s attention, and an insult to all the truly great but ignored bands out there – some of whom probably inspired the Strokes in the first place. They are young, inexperienced and probably only doing what they are told to do, so I can’t really find fault with them.”

Of the current crop of feted US bands, Albini digs the White Stripes. “The White Stripes are a band apart – they’ve been around for a while and helped to foster the scene they are part of. I think they are legit. Most of the other bands mining similar territory are nondescript and not too interesting. Give them a few months and they’ll move on to the next thing.”

Does the current crop of artists have any common ground with Seattle in the early ’90s and/or Big Black and their contemporaries at the time, The Swans, Killdozer and Sonic Youth? “The Seattle scene was centred on a small group of activists who busted their asses to make things and do stuff,” Steve replies. “In the process they supported and brought attention to a lot of already-extant talent and art — largely within a community. This shit you’re talking about seems to be all about the promo staff getting your records played in Gap stores and the publicist getting faces in fashion magazines. In short, trying to insinuate yourself into mainstream culture in fashionable ways rather than creating something that stands as a unique statement on its own.”

“The bands you mention are categorised in common because they weren’t part of the scenes of the time. They weren’t guitar pop, they weren’t hardcore punk and they weren’t dance music. If not being part of a scene is being in a scene, then I’m also in the College of Cardinals, the Freemasons and the League of Women Voters. Really, the four bands you mention, while friendly with one another, have almost nothing else in common. That time was fertile in the underground and there were a lot of bands going off on wild tangents. I don’t see that there is anything in common with the fashion garage scene you’re describing.”

If you type ‘Steve Albini’ into any internet search engine, you’ll find page after page of fansites and resources that have uploaded Alibini’s feted piece ‘The Problem with Music’, including The Frames’ official site. This influential article details the workings of major labels and a step by step summary of their financial dealings with new talent. It has become a sort of word of mouth manifesto for artistic independence.

“I don’t take any personal pride in spelling out the problems in the greater music industry,” Steve offers. “I think everyone seriously involved in music needs to know the nuts-and-bolts financial aspects of the game, and that essay is one piece of a rather complex puzzle. The short version is that you should make music because you love it, and don’t expect the world to pay you for the honour. If you’re going to try to make money at it, then you need to be careful who you deal with and why, and your decisions need to be based on real circumstances rather than a romantic notion of what you would like them to be. At the root of it is this: There are grave risks in trying to become part of the corporate entertainment industry. Risks to your art, your pride and your livelihood. Artists need to understand those risks. The alternative is to work with people you know and trust — people who are fundamentally like you are — and then it isn’t music ‘business’ at all.”

However, Steve has been involved with major label recordings such as Bush, Page and Plant and most famously Nirvana’s final studio album In Utero. Geffen were said not to be at all happy with the work the band had recorded with Steve and drafted in Scott Litt to remix the singles ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and ‘All Apologies’.

“I really enjoyed working on that record and developed a genuine respect for Nirvana,” he recalls. “The recording of that record was a great, fun experience. When the political shitstorm with the label started after the fact, their label did not behave honourably, but it would have been naive to expect that. I was disgusted by the behaviour of their label, but that was a small part of the experience, and I remember that album fondly. I don’t think that project changed my general perception of the industry. Rather, it reinforced it.”

How different was the actual finished project? “I don’t really know how to quantify it for you. I noticed the changes made, and I wished they hadn’t been made, but it’s not my record. The record in the stores is exactly as Nirvana wanted it to be, and I respect them for that. They didn’t allow the label to have its way unquestioningly, and they made changes to suit themselves. That self-determination in the face of criticism (including mine) is rare.”

The future release of Nirvana rarities and unreleased material such the reportedly very catchy ‘You Know You’re Right’, has been dogged by an increasingly bitter battle with Courtney Love and Kurt’s mother Wendy Cobain at loggerheads with original band members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. “It is none of my business,” Albini states. “I have great respect for Dave and Krist. I would trust them to behave honourably and in keeping with the manner the band conducted itself while all of them were alive, I would imagine they can resolve this latest disruption reasonably.”

When Steve Albini first started to make music, there was no Internet or such a thing as an alternative community of any great significance. He has witnessed an enormous amount of positive developments for writing, producing and performing music over the last 25 years. “More and more distinctly personal music is being made – unique to the person making it and free of any pre-ordained song ‘craft’ he opines. “More records are being made by the artists themselves, which de-centralises power. There is a general decline in realism, but that’s probably a phase, and records will begin to sound less tweaked and programmed (at least in certain genres) once the neophytes get over the novelty of the process and the technology. With performing and touring, generally there are better club PA systems these days, so bands sound pretty good routinely rather than rarely.”

And what would Steve consider to be among the worst manifestations of musical culture over the last twenty-five years? “The hubristic presumption that the world needs another goddamn record and should pay for the privilege,” he affirms. “The parasitic nature of the non-performing parts of the music industry. The delusionary notion promoted by those ignorant of the system that anyone can “exploit” the music business without doing exactly as the music business wishes – this is based on McLaren’s First Stupid Postulate: that swindling someone in a position of authority over you is both possible and desirable.”

Would Steve have a favourite album of this time period? “No, not one. It would take me a long time to whittle it down to a few dozen. Maybe the Slint album Spiderland.” As everyone bangs on about Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, does Steve consider any of the other albums he has recorded to be overlooked? “I don’t concern myself about whether they are overlooked or not,” Steve counters. “I particularly like (or think I did a good job on): The Breeders’ Pod, Palace’s Viva Last Blues, Arise’s Therefore, Jesus Lizard’s Head, Goat and Liar, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet’s Sport Fishin’, PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me, Silkworm’s Developer, The Auteurs’ After Murder Park, lots of stuff.

Steve hooked up with the Frames, Steve Fanagan, Adrian Crowley, Joan of Arse and Berkeley in the same way he gets to work with any band. “I answer the telephone when they call, and I try not to say no.” How does he determine a fee? “For short sessions I charge $300 per day. For longer or more involved sessions, I charge something reasonable worked out with whoever is ultimately paying for it.”

He views the phenomenal success of For The Birds as a vindication for The Frames’ current modus operandi in handling their affairs independently, just as any other artist who is free to follow their own creative impulses. “When allowed to follow their instincts, the band made a great record, and the public appreciated it.” Rather than resting on laurels or basking in the success of any of his projects, Steve is keeping himself busy in his studio.” I’m going to finish up a Cheer Accident record and a Nina Nastasia record in the next few weeks,” he reveals. “I’m loving both of them, and I love all the people involved in both.”

When it comes to his own band Shellac, Albini still adopts the hobbyist approach he has applied to all his recording projects. “We plan to continue at the same slow, undirected pace we’ve maintained for the last ten years.” Interestingly, Shellac is the third trio Albini has played a part in. Does he favour a minimal, compact line up? “I like everything about it,” he enthuses. “The efficiency, the speed of decision making, the portability, the space in the music and the space in the van.”

For the last Shellac album 1,000 Hurts (2000), the vinyl 12” box was a treat for vinyl fetishists. Whats more, a free copy of the CD came with each LP. It didn’t seem to affect sales of either format,” Albini maintains. “We sold about as many as we do of any record. I like the idea and I think it’s appropriate, given that people have several ways to play a record and the additional cost is trivial compared to, say, printing the labels. I think there is a significant audience (including me) that only listens to music on vinyl. I don’t know if that audience is growing or if the record manufacturing concerns have just noticed and halted the progression toward premature obsolescence.”

From championing vinyl to releasing and recording fantastic music, Steve is singled out as one the most influential and important figures within a international community of alternative musicians. He doesn’t give too much credence to flattery. Neither does he consider his contributions as a musician, songwriter or recording engineer worthy of over-lavish attention. “I don’t think I am unique,” he asserts. “There is a thread of continuity among people who devote their lives to this, and they all contribute normal common sense and a decent work ethic. It is also nice that there are still unselfish people in the game, and I try to live that way.”