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From Big Black’s noise to Joanna Newsom’s hush: 10 of Steve Albini’s greatest recordings
Whether as an artist or working behind the mixing desk, from major-label megastars to drone-metal auteurs, here’s a selection of the late musician’s greatest work
Assembled in a couple of weeks at the secluded Pachyderm studios in Minnesota, his inventive mic placements and track-it-and-move-on approach meshed perfectly with songs that were desperate and fearless, lurching from shlock-and-roll to portentous blues using a basic guitar-bass-drums formation with zero sugar-coating. 1000 Hurts is perhaps the best evocation of the noise-rock chemistry he found with Bob Weston and Todd Trainer, a peerless rhythm section whose grinding low end and punishing snare snaps combine for a sense of resonance that recalls getting slapped with an open hand. During Hold On Magnolia we’re feet from a low stage as Molina pours his heart out, while on I’ve Been Riding With a Ghost, Jennie Benford’s vocals are caught by the wind and hauled skywards, with a remarkable sense of the great wide open conjured from within the four walls of Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio Albini founded in the mid-1990s.
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