Couple of albums for our Thing of The Day today, a couple of just released albums linked by both an attitude kind of shared by both bands in very different ways and by the touch of Steve Albini…

Fugazi – Albini Sessions (Benefit for Letters Charity) (Discord) – First you need to know that “this is a digital-only release and the band is donating its share of the proceeds to Letters Charity. Please be generous. Thank you. Letters Charity is a non-profit organisation on a mission to use Art as a conduit to transform passive compassion into immediate assistance through the distribution of money given, without expectation or judgement, directly to families experiencing poverty” – 

“In the fall of 1992, the members of Fugazi were deep in the process of finishing up the songs that would eventually come out as the “In On The Killtaker” album the following year. The band had been working on the songs for a couple of years and had gotten as far as recording a few of them at Inner Ear as well as making numerous practice recordings, but by late October they seemed to have hit a bit of a wall. In an attempt to shake things up, it was decided that they would take up Steve Albini’s standing invitation to do a free recording at his Electrical Audio Studio, which at the time was located in the basement of his house on North Francisco in Chicago. Fugazi and Steve had crossed paths numerous times over the years and had become friends and admirers of each other’s work. The band really appreciated Steve’s aesthetic, especially the early Jesus Lizard records and it seemed like the change of scenery would help them get a better perspective on the songs they had written….” read on via their Bandcamp page

Interesting to hear Fugazi via Albini and dare we call it his Chicago sound? His rather different take on it all, drums and bass guitar indeed a little more present, a slightly less polished delivery or maybe it is slightly more polished? Differently polished? Equally as good, no better, no worse, just different enough to appreciate what Steve Albini brought to the bands and artists he worked with. Now, I’m no musician but I have spent more that enough time in recording studios mostly watching the clock and paying the damn bill while producers mostly talked shit, I always liked the things Steve Albini had to say and especially his thoughts on how the essence of a band should be captured. Interesting that both Fugazi and Albini feel these records were flat, that isn’t quite what I hear here, maybe a touch muddy (now I’d like to be hearing properly mastered versions of these recordings on vinyl or CD rather than as these damn sound files and I’m sure Mr. Albini would say the same thing) and maybe his methods meant that sometimes the magic was captured and sometimes they never quite got it nailed down, it is hard to really tell if this would have done as In On The Killtaker? We are kind of familiar with the version that was eventually released and that will always be the reference point. Here, those drums and bass are a bit more (a bit too much?) up front, this is a good alternative version though and a real insight into the man, the time and the place (his place). Thing is Steve Albini rarely recorded a band I didn’t like anyway so it is kind of hard to judge the man’s work, these recordings are certainly interesting, punchy, alive and no, not flat. Ask me in six months which version of Killtaker I’m reaching for and it will probably not be this one, really good to hear this officially released recordings rather than just bootleg copies, really really good to have these versions. Both Steve Albini and Fugazi were very influential both in terms of the music made and the way it was all done back there, the questioning of it all and sometimes the answering of those questions. Interesting to hear how the songs evolved between these recording and the final recordings as well but then I love early versions on albums I consider important (and I could be nerding or trainspotting over these versions for hours when I really should be sorting out an artshow herding artists and the rest of it). This is a great record of a time and place, a brilliant document and yes, get recordings…      

Find the album and more about Letters Charity via Bandcamp    

And talking of Steve Albini’s way of doing things, his killing jokes and such…

Killing Joke – Extremities, The Albini demos and live beginnings ’88 (Invisible Records) – Oh that Killing Joke sound that others borrowed so much from didn’t they Nirvana, didn’t they Faith No More (a sound that was all over the second Atom Seed album by the way) – “Featuring the demo-versions of Extremities, Dirt And Various Repressed Emotions alongside the recording of Killing Joke’s secret show from on December 20th, 1988, the Holy Grail for all the Killing Joke fans” – is it the Holy Grail?  As demandingly good as these rew live recordings are, the most interesting thing here are the Albini recordings; “A journey into the raw and visceral origins: from the demo sessions mixed by Steve Albini to the night of the very first secret show on December 20th, 1988. In the heart of Chicago, Geordie and Martin Atkins turned frustration and distance into pure creative energy, recording the now-legendary “Black Cassette” demos at Albini’s house. Distorted, menacing bass lines, unruly oscillators, and Albini running endlessly up and down the stairs between the basement drum room and the pantry control room defined a sound that was brutally direct and uncompromising….”

And once again, as with the Fugazi material, this is a great insight into the workings of a band and an engineer that got it, both is terms of the band he was working with at the time and in terms of how music really should be recorded in general, an engineer who didn’t want to impose himself on the art of it all. This album is worth the price of admission for the raw power of Money alone, that instrumental demo recording really does capture Killing Joke in the raw; that is the sound of Geordie and Martin Atkins right on it, that is the pure sound nailed and waiting for Mr Coleman to do what he would need to do with his nine tenths of the law   

So you have four instrumental pieces from the Albini sessions and (on the other side if we’re talking about the vinyl) there’s the live recordings; “On the other side, a truly rare document: excerpts from Martin Atkins’s very first show with the band, at Burberries in Birmingham on December 20th, 1988. In a small, mirror-lined club filled with tension, adrenaline, and inevitable collisions with the walls, Extremities, The Fanatic, Intravenous, and The Beautiful Dead were performed publicly for the first time. It was the night when everything ignited: the blast beat still in its embryonic stage, the controlled fury Geordie demanded — “can you go a bit more Moonie on it?” — and above all Jaz’s theatrical yet strikingly genuine laughter. Not just joy, but a declaration: a giant “f*ck off” to the doubters and a prelude of what was about to come. A raw, essential, indispensable testimony: the birth of an era”.

Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a holy grail, certainly an important part of Killing Joke history (and what a history they have, one of the properly vital bands of our times, an important part of English musical history I’d go as far as saying).  These live recordings are raw, gloriously messy recordings, bootleg quality, not that bootleg quality is a bad thing. I guess you really need to be a Killing Joke fan already to get something out of  all this, then again there is an energy and attitude, a challenge to be found in those live tracks, that menace, that something that always did challenge, and that version of The Fanatic maybe would make for a great first ever encounter with the might of Killing Joke… oh and that laugh. “You see, when the laughing stops, the joke begins”

Bandcamp