Steve Albini Was a Hater to His Core. And We’re All Better for It.

I like to leave room for accidents or chaos. Making a seamless record, where every note and syllable is in place and every bass drum is identical, is no trick. Any idiot with the patience and the budget to allow such foolishness can do it. I prefer to work on records that aspire to greater things, like originality, personality and enthusiasm. If e

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So, what is it that Rick Rubin does? How has he helped artists make their best music for almost half a century across such disparate genres and styles? The secret seems to be rooted in self-discovery. As Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks put it, Rubin “has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured”—or, to use our te

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darling of the avant-garde. Yoko Ono was always saying to me, “If only I could be as famous as you.” So I had an affair with Yoko and did a music series at her loft, and I put a warning on the very first flyer: THE PURPOSE OF THIS SERIES IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT. I was one of the first people to destroy an instrument onstage. I burned a violin at the Y

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One such curator is Derrick Gee, a former online radio d.j. who lives in Australia. I first encountered Gee on TikTok and was pulled in by his architect-ish look: thin wireframe glasses and stylishly baggy, often monochrome outfits. He records videos of himself talking into a microphone in a low, soothing voice, breaking down trends in contemporary... See more