Steve Albini è una leggenda dell’industria musicale mondiale, per intenderci ha prodotto dai Nirvana ai Foo Fighters, Fugazi, Gogol Bordello, Sonic Youth e mille altri. In questi giorni è apparsa questa lettera indirizzata al mondo della musica dance.
Non è proprio una lettera anti-dance, ma una sorta di messaggio diretto agli addetti ai lavori e soprattutto al contesto in cui loro stessi si muovono. Cioè i club, la gente, le droghe che usano e i vestiti che indossano.
La mail è apparsa in un cartellone pubblicitario di Londra, ed era stata scritta da Steve Albini a Powell, techno producer che aveva scritto all’iconico produttore americano le motivazioni dietro all’uso di un sample dei Big Black in una traccia di prossima pubblicazione per XL Recording intitolata Insomniac.
Ecco la lettera:
Sounds like you’ve got a cool thing set up for yourself. 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
