Steve Albini




Steve Albini is an influential singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac. He is founder and owner of the company Electrical Audio, which operates two recording studios in Chicago.
As a lyricist, Albini demonstrates an interest in the seamier side of life, writing lyrics describing inter-personal injustice, dehumanization and personal crises, often written from the perspective of a central character.
He is currently most active as a record producer, but he dislikes the term and prefers to be credited as recording engineer (if the record company insists on any credit at all; Albini is comfortable with receiving no credit). Contrary to common practice, Albini does not receive royalties for anything he records or mixes: he charges a flat daily fee. Albini estimates that he has engineered the recording of over 1,000 albums. Bands that Albini has worked with include Pixies, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Low, Mogwai, Bush, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Mclusky, The Auteurs, Mono , The Jesus Lizard, The Breeders, Fugazi, F-Minus, Slint , The Wedding Present and Zao.
In Albini's opinion, putting producers in charge of recording sessions often destroys records, while the role of the recording engineer is to solve problems in capturing the sound of the musicians, not to threaten the artists' control over their product. In 2004, Albini summarized his opinions regarding record producers: "It always offended me when I was in the studio and the engineer or the assumed producer for the session would start bossing the band around. That always seemed like a horrible insult to me. The band was paying money for the privilege of being in a recording studio, and normally when you pay for something, you get to say how it's done. So, I made up my mind when I started engineering professionally that I wasn't going to behave like that." (Young 2004).
Nevertheless, albums recorded by Albini bear a distinctive sonic signature. In Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad describes Albini's work on Pixies' Surfer Rosa, but the description applies to many of Albini's efforts: "The recordings were both very basic and very exacting: Albini used few special effects; got an aggressive, often violent guitar sound; and made sure the rhythm section slammed as one." (Azerrad, 344) Another Albini trademark is his habit of generally keeping vocals "low in the mix," or much less prominent than is usual in rock music. (This is said to have been a point of contention during the recording of Nirvana's In Utero).
On that album one can find a typical example of Albini's recording practices. Rather than recording each instrument on a separate track in the manner common in recording popular music, Albini positions a variety of microphones of differing ambience at certain points around a room in which the whole band plays simultaneously. Albini places particular importance on the selection and use of microphones in achieving a desired sound and as such prefers to avoid overdubbing.
Additionally, he is famous (or notorious) in the indie world as an opinionated pundit on the music industry and on trends in indie music, beginning with his earliest writing for zines such as Matter and Forced Exposure, to his commentary on the poor ethics of big record labels, and how their practices filter through to the independent labels. He has been a strong supporter of labels who have tried to break the mold, especially Touch and Go Records, with whom all of his bands have released recordings.
David Gedge of The Wedding Present was allegedly punched by Courtney Love because of his association with Albini.
In addition to his music and recording expertise, Albini is a huge baseball fan, currently supporting the Chicago White Sox, having previously rooted for the Minnesota Twins. He is a journalism graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he worked as a radio DJ for the WNUR Rock Show.

Jethro Tull



Jethro Tull is a rock band that formed in Blackpool, England in the 1960s. Their music is marked by the quirky vocal style and unique lead flute work of frontman Ian Anderson and by unusual and often complex song construction. Their music, though starting with blues rock with an experimental flavour, has incorporated elements of classical, Celtic folk music, and art rock. Anderson has attributed the marked difference between their music and the music of their contemporaries to the group's avoidance of narcotics. While other music groups did influence them in their early years, they quickly developed a unique, instantly recognisable sound.