BIG BLACK HAT

Steve Albini was another hero. He recently gave a lecture to a Mid-Tennesse State University class on sound engineering and somebody caught it here (it's long). If you don't have time to watch the entire thing, it's summarized here quite well courtesy of Andrew. Here's an interesting quote:

Another audience question concerned Albini's work on his most notorious project, the Nirvana In Utero sessions. The recording sessions themselves were "totally normal, it was just like any other record I've ever done. We go to the studio, we make the record, they're happy with it, they go home. After that, when the record label finally heard it, that's when it started. That's when the record label started to try and influence the band, and started to call me names. It didn't affect me on a personal level … but it did begin an ugly period when I almost went bankrupt … The core clientele eventually came back, and I lived."

Another quote from the video when asked about favorites that he had engineered:

"If I rated them purely on the sonics, I was very fond of the records I did with the Jesus Lizard in the '90s. They were a great band and they were playing really well and their recordings were like real bare and I like how those records came out...Um, I did a record with the Pixies and Kim Deal, the bass player from the Pixies had started a band called the Breeders and I made a record for the Breeders shortly thereafter and... the Pixies became real popular and that baffled me cause I thought they were a trivial band. But I really like the Breeders. I thought that they were a real interesting, really unique... Kim carried on with the band for a few years and then took some time off and came back in 97 or 98 to work on another album and I got to work on that album and I liked that album alot as well..."