Steve Albini isn't exactly renowned for holding back on his opinions.
A doyen of the underground, the Chicago-based recording engineer – as he styles himself – has always betrayed a rather blunt sense of wit.
So when the producer Powell asked Albini for permission to sample his previous band Big Black, he perhaps anticipated a grouchy reply. But he probably didn't expect this…
"I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music," begins an email from Albini, before outlining in deadly detail his objections to dance culture.
The intriguing thing? Powell's label XL Recordings have turned the email into a billboard poster on London's Commercial Street. Check out the full email below. (via theQuietus)
I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music. I've always detested mechanized dance music, its stupid simplicity, the clubs where it was played, the people who went to those clubs, the drugs they took, the shit they liked to talk about, the clothes they wore, the battles they fought amongst each other…
Basically all of it: 100 percent hated every scrap.
The electronic music I liked was radical and different, shit like the White Noise, Xenakis, Suicide, Kraftwerk, and the earliest stuff form Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and DAF. When that scene and those people got co-opted by dance/club music I felt like we'd lost a war. I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth. So I am against what you're into, and an enemy of where you come from but I have no problem with what you're doing… In other words, you're welcome to do whatever you like with whatever of mine you've gotten your hands on. Don't care. Enjoy yourself.
Steve
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