Steve Albini has delivered a scathing rant about electronic music and club culture in a newly leaked email.
Electronic producer Powell recently sampled a vocal recording of Albini at a Big Black gig on his new single ‘Insomniac’, which will be released shortly by XL Recordings.
In an attempt to clear the sample, The Quietus reports, Powell personally emailed Albini, explaining his plans and speaking of his love for the musician/producer’s band.
Albini’s reply was less than favourable. “I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music,” his email read. “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 per cent hated every scrap.”
Richard Johnson/NME
Albini continued: “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.”
Despite this, Albini said that he had “no problem” with Powell using the sample, adding, “I haven’t bothered listening to the links, mainly because I’m in a hotel with crappy internet at the moment but also because it probably wouldn’t be to my taste and that wouldn’t help either of us. 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.”
Powell has responded by printing the correspondence in full as a billboard advert promoting the release. Replying to Powell’s intent to print the email, Albini said, “Still don’t care.”
See photos of the billboard, which is located in Shoreditch, east London, above.