RIP Steve Albini

[counterlanguage]

JFPL is probably in the middle of the list of his achievements overall, but still. 61 is too young to go.

The Manics ignore the album these days but I do love it. The perfect opposite of Lifeblood, both flawed but brilliant.

[Glyn]

Christ on a bike that's awful news. Agree that JFPL is a tiny part of a massive legacy but it was a great sound he created for that album. Off to listen to Bag Lady.

[Europa Gluten Free]

Sad news. Very young. JFPL was the last time I was truly excited about a Manics album. It was a massive achievement.

[theraven1979]

JFPL is one of my faves and so many other albums that he had a hand in. No age really.

[Scarecrow]

It's a massive loss to the music world. His own music with Shellac and Big Black was great and his anti-establishment and pro-artist ethos was interesting and inspiring.

Aside from Journal for Plague Lovers (obviously high near the top of my favourite Albini engineered records) and the obvious big hitters (Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies) he recorded so many albums by artists I've enjoyed over the years: Mono, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Craw, The Jesus Lizard, The Wedding Present, Slint, Oxbow, Yourcodenameis:milo, Hum, Failure, Fugazi, Neurosis, Melt-Banana and so on. True legend.

[UEF]

Originally Posted by counterlanguage

JFPL is probably in the middle of the list of his achievements overall, but still. 61 is too young to go.

The Manics ignore the album these days but I do love it. The perfect opposite of Lifeblood, both flawed but brilliant.

Possibly the one time the songs, production and artwork all lined up

[less than zero]

Listened to Atomizer and JFPL back to back - never noticed how much Marlon JD sounds like Big Black before

[Scarecrow]

Clearly I need to give Atomizer a revisit, haven't played that for yonks.

Originally Posted by UEF

Possibly the one time the songs, production and artwork all lined up

Yeah, I think we were pretty lucky to get such an album really.

[LA ex]

Fifteenth anniversary of JFPL. A good excuse to watch the making of video to see Steve interacting with the band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruZo1THMpmc

[Routine Builder]

Very recent interview with Steve Albini on the making of JPFL.l:

https://headlinermagazine.net/steve-...interview.html

[Scarecrow]

Originally Posted by Routine Builder

Very recent interview with Steve Albini on the making of JPFL.l:

https://headlinermagazine.net/steve-...interview.html

I'm glad he had a positive experience with them. He could be such a cynical guy but their work ethic and politics and artistic intent seem to have been right up his street.

[Marconi Delorian]

I vaguely recall the band saying he didn't give much away when they were recording, but one song he did give positive feedback to was William's Last Words. I believe he also made an arrangement suggestion for the Doors Slowly Closing guitar part. Must revisit the documentary and interviews from the time.

[Scarecrow]

Originally Posted by Marconi Delorian

I believe he also made an arrangement suggestion for the Doors Slowly Closing guitar part.

I remember one of the band said in an interview that he'd suggested the intro of Doors Closing Slowly, rather than the band just all starting he'd said just played the opening guitar chord and let the drums be open for that opening piano part, or something to that effect.

Unlike him to change artists' songs but I think it works.

[Marconi Delorian]

JDB on WLW:

And I think this was Steve Albini's favourite song. When we were doing that, I was doing my electric guitar on it and Nick wanted me to do something that was Jimmy Page-esque, a la, not the rock stuff, but the stuff from like 'Physical Graffiti' where it's almost quite erudite and quite flowery. And when we finished that song, Steve Albini was very un-Steve Albini-esque by saying, 'I'm pretty stoked after that'.

On DCS:
NW: I think this is the most stunning piece of music on the record, Albini really, it was the one time he actually arranged four bars of music. He said, 'I'm really embarrassed about it, I hate doing this, I never do this, but just lay back on the first four bars and invert the beat on the intro, and then you've got that Harlem funeral sound'... and he called it really humble, he said 'it's such a humble song'. I think he genuinely liked this song. Yeah, I think it's a proper piece of music. It kind of reminds me of 'In The Neighbourhood' by Tom Waits. Velvet Doom March, you called it, didn't you?

JDB: Yeah, Velvet/Harlem funeral dirge.

[Judge_yrself]

I was very sad to hear of his death. I love Big Black, and he engineered so many great albums that I still listen to today, JFPL included. Yeah, he could be extremely caustic, but he seemed ultimately to have his heart in the right place, and that Guardian piece where he took responsibility for things he said in the past and admitted they were unacceptable showed he'd grown as a human being. Big loss to alternative music