Steve Albini Quotes

I can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

I just want to be a part of a band that will be able to reinvent themselves, you know.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

It's amazing to me to see how bands evolve and how they take all their influences and come up with their own sound.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

Me and Jerry left because we felt we weren't getting anywhere playing our old songs in tiny clubs. The group was getting stale and staying behind the times.

What I'm hoping is that every album I'm going to do will give my audience something different, and that they'll grow as I do.

When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.

You have to grow with the music.

It started off with me being all the way influenced by Atlanta and southern music but I knew my sound had to grow - I started learning melodies.

We always try to make each record a snapshot of the band at that time.

We're still evolving as a band. I think that's really important for a band to do, especially after being around for so many years.

You could say, 'Oh, we're gonna write the heaviest album of all time' or 'We're gonna write an album that sounds like 'Iowa.'' Even if we set out to try to do so, it would never compare. We're not those people anymore, we're not that band anymore.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

Any band on their first couple records is just trying to keep up with their inspiration.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.

On 'Heartbreaker,' I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs. With 'Gold,' I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.

I think music changes and it evolves.

There's been a progression in my sound.

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.

Gamma was a logical progression after doing the Open Fire record.