Image: Wikimedia Commons / Mixwiththemasters

Steve Albini Email About His Hatred Of Dance Music Used To Promote Dance Music

Steve Albini has produced and engineered some HUGE rock bands — we’re talking acts like Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Pixies — so, in fairness, one of his personal emails in which he explains his hatred for dance music is now being used to promote dance music.

Dance producer Oscar Powell, who releases music through XL Recordings under the name Powell, is preparing to release a new single called Insomniac which features a vocal sample of Albini from back in the day when he fronted the band Big Black.

As The Quietus reports, Powell emailed Albini to get clearance for the sample, and while Albini did give his approval by saying “Don’t care. Enjoy yourself”, he also went on an anti-dance rant in which he said that he hates dance culture.

As Albini wrote, “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.”

Albini has previously said that the internet saved music by making it easier for musicians to quickly and easily share their music around the world, and he’s right — just look at how easily Powell got everyone talking about his new single by using Albini’s hatred for dance music to actually promote dance music.

Read Albini’s email-turned-billboard-ad in full below, alongside a photo of the billboard itself.

Listen: Powell – Sylvester Stallone

Powell sought sample clearance from Steve Albini. What happened next will astound you: "I am absolutely the wrong…

Posted by The Quietus on Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Steve Albini’s Email To Powell, Featured On London Billboard

I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music. 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 percent hated every scrap.

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 but I have no problem with what you’re doing…

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.

Steve

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