Does anyone consider that seeing as Steve Albini has been involved with the making of 100's of albums, including discs by 'name' artists like Nirvana, The Zep guys, PJ Harvey, The Pixies etc etc that he may possibly know a thing or two about record 'production'..?
FWIW - I find his posts here often operate similarly to say a good professor in school who challenges his or her students' opinions and poses thoughts /statements so that others are forced to voyage outside their 'safety' zone and really re-examine their belief systems, opinions & <think> hard about why it is they do the things they do..So even if you don't agree with his style, at least people are , probably, thinking hard about why that might be & thats a good thing..
When someone is thinking 'outside the box', instead of making me feel threatened or annoyed, I appreciate the exposure to a <completely> different way of thinking of things..
If everyone here did things the same way & agreed on everything that'd be a bore.
FWIW 2 - the projects I'm working on at the moment involve 2 vocalists (one former 'Grammy' award winner - still having to work hard to put food on the table for his kids while being owed 20 years of 'significant' back royalties by a certain Major label) who breeze into the studio Sinatra style, lay down some parts and cruise off..leaving me to 'produce' their records totally, coordinate the musical tracks, musicians, edit & comp their vocal performances, decide the running order, titles, artwork etc..given the artists' schedules & lifestyles, there's no way they can or even want to be present in the studio while all this other work is going on..
so they will hear the finished record later on & are OK with that..
I'm not saying this is 'the way' to make records - but this is what has to be done in order to make these particular records happen..
I like how Steve is challenging the oft held notion of the 'producer' as the 'star' of the show / some all-knowing svengali figure imposing their own 'vision' and who thinks they know better than the artist how to mold, shape and interpret the ideas (even though that may actually be the case in some instances)..
Rock it!
RM