“We’re prepared to the lowest
acts to be able to make music.”
by Bart Vanegeren. (translated by me)
The Chicago Sun newspaper that came with my room service-breakfast
headlines : ‘U.S. basks in one of the warmest winters ever.’ Already
in a good mood, I open my hotel room curtains. It’s snowing over
Chicago. Fortunately, my visit to the windy city is one where I can be
inside all the time, more precisely in a bunker down at a bridge over
the Chicago River. Somewhere in the distance, the snow-white highest
parts of the The Loop skyscrapers, keeps the illusion of a winter
sports holiday alive.
The windowless bunker hosts Electrical Audio Recording, Steve
Albini’s recording studio. In three weeks time, the third album of
Dead Man Ray will be recorded here. Daan Stuyven (vocals, guitar), Rudy
Trouvé (guitar), Elko Blijweert (guitar), Karel De Backer (drums) and
Wouter Van Belle (keyboards) have two more recording days ahead. Five of
the ten songs still need to get a definite mixing, and an eleventh song
still has a lot of work on.
Daan Stuyven : “We wanted a raw album in which the details
would pop out better : less messing about and more purified than the
precious cds. I had also told myself to sing more and play less guitar,
but in the end I’m still playing guitar the entire album. I did spend
more time on the lyrics this time, but I’m not entirely sure that was
such a good idea : the lyrics are at times very dark and bold. That’s
not a bad thing, but it still feels a bit like taking out the trash.”
HUMO : After the less well received ‘Trap’, does the sound of
the third album come closer to that of the more successful ‘Berchem’?
Rudy Trouvé : “I still don’t understand people thought Trap
was too difficult. I personally think it’s a much better record than
‘Berchem’. It probably had something to do with the time of the
release : ‘Berchem’ arrived at exactly the right time, the time was
right for an album with many pop references.”
Stuyven : “’Trap’ was a bit darker and more filmic than ‘Berchem’
was, and because of that probably harder to listen to in one go. The new
record clearly has one sound, which should make it easier to listen to
in one session. That unity has a lot to do with the working method : We’re
recording everything in 21 days in stead of 2 years; every one of us has
two guitars at their disposal in stead of ten; everything is being
recorded in the same manner, whereas we had a melting pot of tapes,
four-tracks and Protools in the previous albums. We also recorded all
the vocals in one single week - to keep a consistent voice, I even
smoked the same amount of cigarettes and drank as much every day.”
Anger is the injection motor behind the guitar terror of Steve Albini:
Each time adrenalin gets into his veins, he plugs in his guitar. In ’81,
he started Big Black, the legendaric noise-combo, which together with
Hüsker Dü prepared the path in the eighties for Grunge in the
nineties. Albini - his guitar a chainsaw, his drums his hammers and his
voice a Stiletto knife - stood up against man and society and left them
dead behind.
Each time I played their debut LP ‘Atomizer’, it seemed as if blood,
anger and black acid were printed on the vinyl. After Big Black’s
split-up, Albini made one record with Rapeman (‘Two Nuns
& a pack Mule’), a band he named after a Manga character,
which always disembowels his victims. Nowadays, Albini is the man behind
Shellac Of America, which for three albums in a row has been
producing sounds that could make stone break into little pieces.
In a few months, he’ll turn fourty, but he already received a lifetime
Achievement Grammy Award.
The producer Albini has spread itself out as a dangerous virus over
every record collection : he was behind the mixing deck of amongst
others The Breeders (‘Pad’), PJ Harvey (‘Man-Size’),
Helmet (‘Meantime’), Nirvana (‘In Utero’),
Low (‘Things we lost in fire’), Nine Inch Nails
(‘Fragile’), Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (‘Acme’),
Will Oldham (‘Guapero: Lost Blues 2’) and The
Pixies (‘Surfer Rosa’). And now for Dead Man Ray.
Trouvé : “It was my idea to ask Albini. The record company
hoped we wouldn’t do the production ourselves this time, and the
original suggestion was to ask Holger Czukay, but he turned out
to have a full schedule for the entire year, so that’s why we chose
Albini. Elko and myself are enormous Albini-fans.”
Wouter Van Belle : “I am more of a popmusic fan, but I
instantly thought it was a great idea : to produce an album, you’re
better off with somebody than with nobody, and Albini is somebody. He
can make the sound rumble like no one else can. In the old days, when I
was producing Gorky and other bands, I listened a lot to The Pixies.”
Stuyven: “’Surfer Rosa’ is the only one of my favourite
records which has anything to do with Albini.”
Karel De Backer : “I got to know Albini from Rudy and Elko. I
was very much attracted to the drums on his albums. Albini is really
possessed with drums, he also finetuned the snares of my drums together
with me. The way the drums sound on the new record : it’s like a dream
to me.”
HUMO : Are the similarities between Albini’s guitar terror
and Dead Man Ray not a bit thin on the ground ? Daan, you once said
Duran Duran brought you to singing, and that the guitar is the CVP (Flemish
conservative party) among the instruments.
Stuyven : “There are three guitarists in Dead Man Ray, but we
try to avoid clichés. Elko has developed a strange, vaguely African
guitarstyle, Rudy’s guitar doesn’t sound stereotypical either, and
myself, I have more focused on my singing than on playing my chords. And
Albini really can get enthusiastic about things he would never do
himself as a musician.”
HUMO : Were you impressed by Albini ?
Stuyven : “The first few days, everyone was a bit on the quiet
side, but in the end his class and style gave us wings.”
Trouvé : “I was enormously intimidated by him, and after three
weeks, I actually still am. I still feel like a small man next to him.”
Elko Blijweert : “It was very confronting to work with Albini,
because he does a thousand things a day and sleeps very little. He also
takes care of the paper work of the studio for instance, and yet he
still remains very calm under all the stress. We can sometimes moan we
have to work a lot at home, but he does a lot more than us. Question is
whether he enjoys it himself all the time - I heard him more than once
sigh something like ‘If I had a life…’ ”
HUMO : After recording ‘In Utero’, Kurt Cobain said about
Albini : “I was prepared to live together with a sexist asshole,
but he was surprisingly helpful, friendly and easy to work with.”
Stuyven : “That’s absolutely true. Well, it’s a small
world, and you can have a incorrect reputation before you know it. I for
instance, have the reputation to be drunk, while it’s actually not so
bad. (takes a sip from his in coffee disguised whisky)”
Trouvé : “I actually was afraid he would disappoint as a human
being, but he is actually extremely kind and charming. He’s also very
intelligent: whether you ask him a question about sound, potatoes or
toothpaste, he’ll always reply with a logical and well informed
answer.”
Blijweert : “He’s an intellectual, but in the good sense of
the word.”
Trouvé : “I was very surprised by how he can always remain so
civilised. Sometimes people ring him with incredibly stupid questions,
and still he will still very patiently explain into details what exactly
mastering means.”
HUMO : So where does his reputation come from ?
Trouvé : “Albini always has very clear opinions and he’ll
never be too embarrassed to come out with them.”
Electrical Audio Recording is Chicago without its chic. The studio,
which is on the entire ground floor, is the only somewhat large room in
the building. The first floor holds another, smaller studio, the with
vinyl records isolated room of Albini and his girlfriend, a shower, a
small kitchen, seven small rooms for inhabiting musicians, and a corner
with a couch, three walls of videotapes and a biljart table. Albini
adores driebanden (sort of biljartgame), and has matches of Ludo
Dielis and Raymond Ceulemans (24 times world champion driebanden)
on video. There is more bizarre stuff in his collection : a band member
which chooses to remain anonymous, claims there is a video of Jaws 2 in
a box which promises gay porn on the outside. In the living areas of the
building, the house cat is king of the building. Otherwise, the pet is
just what you’d expect from a noise-god : it is deaf.
Five years ago, Albini and friends have transformed the hangar
themselves into a sound studio, under the motto : “we don’t have a
clue what we’re doing, but with a do-it-yourself instruction booklet,
we’ll get there. It’s a typical example of Albini’s tight
do-it-yourself philosophy, who constantly strives for musical integrity
and independence for musicians. He despises large record companies,
which he holds responsible for the demise of pop music. In everything he
does, he handles things the a-typical manner : the new Shellac album was
never advertised anywhere, the band members refused any promotional
activity. Shellac’s debut, ‘At Action Park’ was initially
only available on vinyl, ‘the 177 grams kind - the nice and thick
ones you can’t blend’. His attitude will unavoidably be with him
when he’ll lead the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England next
month: Albini himself takes care of the artistic budget, and pays for
the travel expenses of every band in the line-up. His do-it-yourself
philosophy has more bizarre twists : when the studio master offers him a
Starbucks-coffee, Albini refuses and replies ‘you know I
want my coffee in balance’, and starts mixing his umpteenth lait
russe by a secret recipe.
Trouvé : I am for a very big part with Albini in his
do-it-yourself philosophy, even though he thinks working with a big
record company is an enormous sin. We just signed at a major because
otherwise we wouldn’t be able anymore to make records, and then the
choice is quickly made. We’re prepared to the lowest acts just to be
able to make music.”
Blijweert : “Myself, I would never think signing at a major,
just because the music itself should is the most important thing. But
for Dead Man Ray, I’m okay with it. We haven’t been forced yet to do
anything against our will.”
HUMO : Couldn’t you have brought Albini to Belgium in stead of
camping in here for three weeks ?
Trouvé : “That would have been more expensive. He prefers
working at home, that way he can still have something closely resembling
to a life - that’s why he charges three times his price to work
elsewhere.”
Blijweert : “His way of working is also completely focussed
towards the large room in his own studio. I think he can only get to
about a tenth of his sound elsewhere.”
Trouvé : “I think the only place he prefers is Abbey Road.”
Stuyven : “Spending three weeks in a studio is hard for me. I’m
not very fond of studio’s, because I’m actually not a musician : I’m
not crazy in love with guitar stores, and I get sick from the manuals
that come with complicated technical equipment. Music in itself doesn’t
interest me, to me it’s about what you can communicate with music.”
HUMO : How was it to live so closely together for three weeks
?
De Backer : “I was expecting a lot of conflicts, but apart from
the sporadic discussion, there was no trouble to report. To me, the
cherry on top of the cake was the fact that Todd Trainer, the drummer of
Shellac, is also walking around in here. Not only is he a fantastic
drummer, he’s also simply a very nice guy. We went to a concert of The
Breeders together.”
Trouvé : “One afternoon I was here and Kim Deal (of
the Breeders) was lying here on a sofa. Of course, these sort of
things are excellent for the atmosphere in here.”
Blijweert : “After the first rehearsals we were enthusiastic :
both the reception as the atmosphere within the group was very good, and
we were happy about our work. That’s when the quote fell that stayed
with us for the rest of the three weeks : ‘flowers at the finish’.
Apparently nobody could believe everything in here would keep on going
so well. But in the meantime, we àre nearing the finish.”
Stuyven : “To me this feels like a good school field trip, even
though at times I was struggling for some oxygen. I can’t really spend
time together with someone else for more than a few days, I have to be
able to withdraw myself all the time. I’m realising again which life
of luxury I’m leading in Antwerp: I like working on my own, but
afterwards I enjoy blowing off steam in the company of others just as
much. In here, the pubs close at two o’clock. So we worked until one
or two o’clock, watched a few bad video films and went to sleep, to
start over again the next day at two o’clock. Sometimes we didn’t
leave the building for three days in a row.”
”But working together with different people in one room, to me it’s
a very unrealistic feeling. It’s like one long trip - we just as well
could have been in Alaska.
I miss a lot, I need lots of variation, to be able to ping-pong between
different things. I never think the straight way is the most interesting
one - should it be possible, I’d probably try to reach the finish with
my car while bouncing from the left barriers on the road to the right
barriers.”
Blue Volkswagen
Stuyven : “Until yesterday, we were doubting whether to stop at
ten tracks or not. When I was talking to Albini about that eleventh
song, he mentioned it would be something perfectly suited for Ken
Nordine. He said he lived downtown and immediately suggested to give
him a call. This afternoon we’ve been to Nordine’s place and he was
immediately enthusiastic about working together. An hour ago, he read me
a piece of text on the phone which he wrote earlier today. It’s
fantastic - the way he says ‘Blue Volkswagen’ alone is just
brilliant.”
The Beat poet Ken Nordine doesn’t have his poetry to thank for
his cult status, but to advertising. He has literally dubbed thousands
of commercials - Americans can’t drink 7 Up without thinking of
him - and he has one of America’s most famous voices. The instant he
says his first line behind the microphone (‘Hey. Waw. This is it.
This is now.’), I instantly understand why. His smoky voice must
be pure horror to the tobacco industry, even though he never touches a
cigarette. ‘I only smoke pot.’
Until deep into the night, they work on the definite mix of the song.
Finally, Daan decides : ‘Hey. Waw. This is it.’
The first five hours of the next day are lost on one song, until Albini
puts a hold to it. ‘We are messing about with details and we’re
losing the bigger picture. The middle piece now even sounds somewhat
like Bruce Springsteen, I’m absolutely not happy about that. Let’s
all take a break and listen again later with fresh ears.’
Stuyven : “Albini has a very diplomatic, rational way of
keeping control of things. He never uses artistic arguments, it’s
always about the so-called technical stuff, which do define the sound
artistically a lot. For example : he makes sure that in the basic
recordings, the better part of the 24 tracks are being used, so
afterwards he can say there’s no more room for overdubs. But in fact,
he simply hàtes overdubs.”
De Backer : “Albini has had an artistically very important
role, even though he probably won’t want to admit that himself.”
Trouvé : “He’s never afraid of telling which he thinks is a
good idea and which not, but he always adds he won’t hang himself if
we should choose for the thing he doesn’t like himself. A real
producer would always interfere with chords and arrangements, and tear
the songs upside down, he does none of those things.”
Van Belle : “To protect himself. Whoever calls himself
producer, is responsible for the final result, and that’s something he
just càn’t be. His priority is to run a company. He starts with
nothing but technique, he sees it as his duty to record our sounds as
good and natural as possible. He doesn’t interfere with structures or
the key of a tone. We are still responsible for the final result of this
record.”
HUMO : Is it hard for you now to take a step aside as a producer
?
Van Belle : “I’m making a side step to make a giant leap
forwards. I have a lot of respect for Albini - he’s a super craftsman,
a nerd in the positive sense of the word. I have lived and worked
under the same circumstances as he does, but four years ago I couldn’t
take it anymore. I’ve become more pragmatic, I’ve learnt how to
delegate. I’m amazed Albini is still idealistic enough to keep up with
it : I wouldn’t even be able to start working with a lot of the
punkrock bands which come knocking on his door.”
HUMO : Was hiring Albini an attempt at getting rid of Dead Man
Ray’s Art-Farty connotations ?
Stuyven : “Bah, they’ll always be there anyway. I don’t
feel like fighting the idea that we are arty-farty. We should just stop
being bothered about it.”
Trouvé : “We particularly wanted to try a different approach.
Until now, we had always made our albums on the computer, and the moment
the songs were finished, we had to learn how to play them live. Now we’ve
chose to really record the sound of a band, and we’re recording
everything live. We haven’t used a computer at all this time.”
Stuyven : “It was a test for us to see what we were exactly
worth. In the meantime, I’m still in favour of both recording methods.
My solo album, which will be released soon, is very poppy, electronical,
kitschy, symphonic and extremely cut-and paste with the computer - an
overdosis of all that Albini hates. But I just don’t want to have to
choose. Also when I eat, get to meet people, or go out, I want the full
spectrum and preferably only the two extremes and opposites, to be
released from all mediocrities.”
Trouvé : “Albini really doesn’t know a thing about computers.
Before we came here, we asked him in an e-mail something about sampling.”
Blijweert : “Whether there would a midi-recorder in the studio.”
Trouvé : “He answered : ‘I’m not sure what you’re
talking about, but I’m sure we haven’t got it.’”
Cago
We’re starting to run out of time : in seventeen hours the plane to
Belgium will leave, and three of the eleven songs still need to be
finalised. One of them still needs a recording of two employees at
Electrical Audio Recording talking through the intercom : Shellac
drummer Todd Trainer (Albini : ‘I swear, he has seven of the nine
properties to be a werewolf’), and the man in charge of the
studio, John - a stand-up comedian who tests his jokes on exhausted
musicians all day long.
When the job is finished, Dead Man Ray head to downtown Chicago, armed
with photo camera’s.
Trouvé : “The new record will probably be called ‘Cago’
- after Chicago, but a bit less obvious or embarrassing than the debut
albums of some Flemish bands, who call their records ‘Las Vegas’ or
something similar. On the way to a guitar store two days ago, we saw a
neonlight advertisement of ‘Chicago’, where the letters ‘chi’
weren’t lit. It’s like we got the illustration for our album as a
gift, just like that. So now we want to take pictures of the neon sign,
though we’ll have to look a bit where exactly it was again. For all we
know, the sign might be fixed already.”
I remain at the studio, alone with Albini. Would he know that Big Black
is mentioned for Chicago in the Lonely Planet ?
‘The songs sometimes were exploring the limits their audience’s
ears, but the band did mark a beginning for a decade of alternative rock
in the city.”
Steve Albini (laughs) : “It’s very flattering, but I’d
like to put that into perspective though : Big Black was never really
popular in Chicago.”
HUMO : Why did you say yes to working with Dead Man Ray ?
Albini : “I thought I understood what they stood for. That’s
sufficient for me : if I don’t feel uncomfortable about it at
forehand, I try to say yes to every question I get.”
HUMO : That must mean you get to work all the time with bands
you don’t like yourself.
Albini : “If I would only work with bands of which I’m an
enthusiastic fan, I wouldn’t have a lot of work on my hands and I
wouldn’t be making much interesting records. Fortunately, throughout
the years I developed a method to block my own personal taste. I get
into a lot of problems when I’m emotionally involved in the music I
record, because that’s when I feel the urge to put my own aesthetics
into the music, and that’s not what I’m here for. My job is to
understand what someone wants, and to make that technically possible.”
HUMO : C’mon, surely you’re more than merely a technician
?
Albini : “When a problem occurs, I have an opinion about it of
course, just like anybody else. I won’t stop myself from telling them
my opinions, but I don’t assume my opinion is the only correct one,
and I certainly don’t force the band to follow my ideas. The most
important thing to me is the band gets the result they are after.
Whether I get a kick out of their record or not, is irrelevant. I’ve
got my own band, I don’t have to force my ideas when I’m working on
someone else’s record.”
HUMO : Are you keeping enough time free for Shellac ?
Albini : “Shellac is pure hobby, pure escapism. That way, no
one can tell us what to do, we’re financially independent from the
band. On top of that, I’d probably have less than half the fun I’m
having now, if Shellac would be a real job. I wouldn’t dream of
working on the band every single week, I would quickly stop getting a
kick out of it. Whenever I get to do something with Shellac, it feels
like Christmas. When we’re on tour, we also particularly visit the
places we always wanted to go to.”
HUMO : If you’re really only working on technique in the
studio, how come there’s a typical Albini-sound ?
Albini : “That has for the better part to do with the type of
bands that want to work with me. I don’t believe the recording is the
most vital stadium in the creation of an album, we can’t do magic in
the studio. For instance, when you play every Low album in a row, you’ll
probably hear a difference between the two albums I recorded with them,
and their other albums. I must admit I have worked on a lot of fantastic
albums in the past, but I think they would have been just as fantastic
with anybody else behind the studio control panel. I have also worked on
a lot of albums people wouldn’t want to listen to, even if they’d be
getting paid for it. That’s also not my fault, I’m not a producer
which directs the music, I’m mostly working on sounds.”
Blood from Stone
HUMO : Your fascination with sound has turned you into a
microphone fetisjist. Thom Yorke said : ‘Steve Albini is the only
producer I know which really measures the distance between two
microphones.’
Albini : “Once in a while it’s the only way to get things
done. You’ve got to take into account sound requires time to come
across, so two microphones on a different distance from the same source
will record differently. So I make sure a microphone is as much removed
from the source as the other one. If someone else doesn’t do this,
that’s up to them. But I deliver a good result.”
HUMO : Are you a workaholic ?
Albini : “My work can be exhausting, and can distract me from
the simple enjoyments in life, but I never want to deny myself the
chance to a nice experience. I’ll never regret having done so much,
while I could regret the things I haven’t done. Our lives aren’t
simple.
It’s not about money to me. The best moments in the studio, the ones
that have changed me as a human being, aren’t necessarily the ones I
got the most money from. Ninety percent of the bands I work with can’t
afford a lot. You can’t get blood from stone. I feel comfortable
knowing I’m affordable and available.”
HUMO : Are you by definition against big money ? To record
Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’, you were satisfied with a 100.000
dollar fee. Should you have charged the usual percentage per album sold,
you would have earned five times as much.
Albini : “In the music industry, people who aren’t making
music themselves, are incredibly greedy. They always want more, and
there’s only one place where you can always get more money from : the
bands themselves. So my sympathies are no matter what always with the
band: I consider musicians my friends and we share the same destiny. I
don’t want to touch their income. When I’m stealing money from
someone who is already disadvantaged by the system, I get part of the
system. I don’t need to get greedy like so many others, you don’t
need that to make good records.”
HUMO : Is it true you hardly knew Nirvana when they asked you
to produce their album ?
Albini : “I don’t listen to the radio a lot, because I never
get surprised from what I hear on the radio, and I can’t be bothered
anymore about it. I heard ‘Nevermind’ once at a friends’
place, but I didn’t really think Nirvana was the best band of it’s
generation. As the matter a fact, I think of ‘NeverMind’ as
their worst album.”
HUMO : When the album was finished, the rumour quickly spread
the album sounded horrible, and you were to blame for it.
Albini : “No one from the record company has ever dared to
speak to me directly about it, they were just saying what they heard
from gossips. In the end, they remixed two songs and re-mastered the
entire album, so the guitars would sound less loud. I don’t know if an
outsider would hear a lot of difference between my version of ‘In
Utero’ and the one that made it to the stores, but I thought my
work was horrendously mutilated. The music industry had shown its true
face again : they constantly try to manipulate out of greed. Humanity
and respect for creativity are completely non-existent.”
Cheap Trick
HUMO : Is it your hate towards the music industry that has
delivered you the reputation of an aggressive asshole ?
Albini : “I have the records I made as a musician to thank for
that reputation. I don’t understand why aggressive music should be
made by aggressive people, but in the music industry, it’s all about
myths. Michael Jackson might very well be a pleasant man to be with, but
he’s turning into an abstract idea himself : the personalisation of
strange behaviour and plastic surgery. People never talk about him as a
person, it’s always about that abstract figure with the same name.
There’s also an abstract idea that goes with the name Steve Albini. I
can’t help that and I don’t care about it.”
HUMO : Do you enjoy provoking ? Or is it coincidental you call
your band ‘Rapeman’ and your cd ‘Songs about Fucking’?
Albini: “Oh, but to my mother, the name Rapeman is more
provocative than the name Sex Pistols. To make a clear statement
on what it’s all about, is often confused with provoking. It’s a
fact that something like ‘I’m not entirely sure about it, but I
have a feeling you just might possibly be a paedophile’, is more
provocative than ‘You look like a child rapist.’ The first
approach requires showbusiness, the second one requires less energy and
less time. I want to have everything in my life as efficient as
possible, my way of talking included.”
HUMO : The result can sometimes be cruel : legend has it you
put an end to Big Black because the band became ‘duff, ugly and
persistent, like a wart’.
Albini : “That doesn’t immediately sound familiar to me, but
I completely agree with it. Big Black ended primarily out of practical
reasons : the other guitar player, Santiago Durango went to law
school. But creatively speaking I didn’t think of that as a problem: I
think we had done more or less everything we had to do. Should we have
carried on further, I think we would have quickly started to sound
uninteresting. I’m glad we quit back then, I never mourned about Big
Black.”
HUMO : Was anger the energy behind Big Black ?
Albini : “Big Black was a reaction to a lot of things that went
wrong, in society altogether and more specifically in the music
business. We were for instance reacting against rounding off the
experimental edges of music. It happened all the time; you saw a band
releasing a great, solid debut album, and by the time they released
their third album, they sounded like any other band around. It became
almost an accomplishment to make boring music, and we thought of that as
an insult. Along the way, the anger quietly drifted away. In your early
puberty, you go though a phase where you feel personally insulted by all
sorts of things. As you go along, you start to learn how to ignore those
things, so you don’t have to constantly be irritated about everything.”
Daan comes walking in with a Cago-polaroid in his hands. Time for the
last straight line. The mixing of the three last songs happens like a
charm. At four o’clock in the morning, the album is finished, over
seven hours before the airplane leaves for Belgium. Albini plays the
eleven finished songs after each other for the first time. Todd - half
man, half werewolf joins us. ‘Cago’ has the pulsing energy and
charming variety of Chicago, but without the chic of it. Daan leans
backwards with a stupid smile on his face, Trouvé subtly headbangs to
the record, De Backer is motionlessly enjoying Albini’s tight drums,
Van Belle is listening in a coma-like state. Blijweert is into town, on
the search for flowers at the finish. |