Friday, December 14, 2012

#659 Big Black - Atomizer

Steve Albini has a way with sounds, producing some of the sharpest, harshes guitar records in mainstream-ish alternative 90's rock (including, probably most famously, In Eutero). Here's his some of his earliest, self-created music: honed to a noisy industrial edge, with a hellbent guitar sound that soars like Loveless's evil twin.

The real key is the nasty, hissing drum machine that whirs at the album's heart. This isn't the bum-bum-bip-bum Casiotone looping you might expect, this is lurches and lunges with sinister energy. Its a heck of a sound; ugly, yet strangely inviting, heavy, but exhilarating instead of exhausting.

This is as pure as Albini would cut his particular brand of scathing rock and roll, decidedly worth hearing once if you're any kind of student of the era 4/5

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