Powell Responds to Steve Albini Billboard Craziness in New Interview

Earlier this week, XL bought a billboard in London (that’s it above) to promote new Powell single “Insomniac”. The billboard featured an email the producer received from Steve Albini, concerning Powell’s request to sample his vocals on the track. Thanks to Albini’s invective – a colorful attack on “mechanized dance music” and “its stupid simplicity” – the story took off. Now, in an interview with the Quietus, Powell has addressed the furore.

Powell says:

I got an email from Steve, and first and foremost thought ‘this is just incredible writing’. It made me laugh and he was saying things that I believe about music, so it was a chance to say something about the state of electronic music and see what people thought about it. Obviously the bands he lists are some of my favourites, which seems completely lost on people. I liked the tone, the angst, the hatred of so much of what’s going on. Undoubtedly he’s not clued into loads of stuff, but there is a lot of shit electronic music around. It’s become this coffee table, festival-going alternative to rock music. I liked the fact that he was attacking that…

What’s being lost on people is that it’s being positioned as Powell against Steve Albini but it was never like that, it was me and Steve against stuff – without him I wouldn’t be making this kind of music. I emailed him yesterday to say ‘just for the record it wasn’t supposed to go like this, but it’s funny and I’m doing it because I love you’ and he said ‘don’t worry, I totally understand and appreciate the fact that you love my music’. It wasn’t like I’d made this track and wanted someone famous on it, the sample process is totally organic when I’m making music.

He concludes: “I believe finding interesting ways to talk about music, rather than just paying for more space on Spotify, is part of the challenge we face today. What would you rather? A billboard with my face on it? That would be beautiful, sure, but dull.”

Read our list of Albini’s 10 best records.

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