recording drums with steve albini

Cool interview. I've already watched it a couple of times! I love Albini's work

That overhead stereo peak limiter he uses for overheads is an inexpensive tool

www.ebay.com/i/152852338929?chn=ps

I imagine it's fairly transparent up to a few dB of peak limiting, sounds intriguing to me.

Audio nerds paint Albini with various brushes depending on musical taste and disposition— but for me he has served artists like Jason Molina (RIP) just as well as, say, The Jesus Lizard. And that's a worthy thing.

He had me with the Pixies.

i had a moment once, with steve, but he wasn't there. :-)

i had started to record people and thought it would be interesting to pull out my fav albums and look up who recorded them.
there were only 3-4 engineers in total and about 90% was this guy called steve albini.

who the fuck is steve albini!!!

i thought.

in utero resonates with me. but there are so many. the strain by teeth is another.

Thanks, that's great! Love Macpherson.

there's always a critic

Interesting. Did anyone else hear the distortion on some of the dead room drums? Definitely gets crunchy a few times.

Anyone else notice how further on in the video he seemed very "over" the questions?

Huge tangent:

It's interesting to think about just that— perfection. Most of my favorite records are perfectly imperfect, all in different ways:

Exile, Pod, Time (The Revelator), Key Lime Pie, Remain in Light, Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home, The Letting Go, It's a Wonderful Life, Bach: The Goldberg Variations, any gloriously noisy Segovia.

I wonder if I can add Ottis Redding's stuff to the list? I suppose it is a matter of perspective.

Hmm.  

As a drummer of nearly 30 years now, I can't say I've met very many other drummers in the studio or around the world that use uneven tension as a go-to sound.

As for non-interventionism..  I'd also say that I've met a lot more drummers who were completely tone deaf and couldn't tune their own instruments if their lives depended on it..  Most are fine with whatever sound they have... until you tune their kits properly with good heads, and then suddenly they hear what drums are supposed to sound like for the first time..

So I wouldn't take non-interventionism at face value unless it was a complete professional.

Nice choices. Cool to see Key Lime Pie on that list!

I do really like the sound of Lie Down in the Light btw, one of my reference acoustic recordings and for mixing electric with acoustic for that matter.

Hell yeah. I saw them play Last Splash front to back (plus other songs afterwords as well) on New Year's eve a few years ago. Still one of the best shows I've seen in a while.