I hate ‘foodie’ because it’s cute, like pretty much all diminutives associated with eating. ‘Veggies,’ ‘sammies,’ ‘parm.’ I eat food, and I cook it: it’s for eating, preferably with friends, and I don’t make a...

I learned to cook from my mom. Most of what I ate growing up was Italian cooking.

Suicide was such a formative band for me, so influential in the development of my taste. They’re one of those bands that operated in absolute isolation for so long that they developed a completely unique...

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather...

In heaven, after antipasti, the first course will be pasta.

I moved to Chicago in 1980 to go to college.

You see something happen to a population whereby everyone adopts something that’s just preposterous in a way that makes it normal instantly. If any one person prior to the rash of puka shells, for example,...

I feel like bands should be growing, living, functioning entities and to crystallize a band into a single album, and for that to be a touchstone – I understand it from a fan’s perspective but...

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent...

The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens.

For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more.

I have no problem with bands using participant financing schemes like Kickstarter and such. I’ve said many times that I think they’re part of the new way bands and their audience interact and they can...

By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum.

Cranking the Auto-Tune is so easy to do that there’s almost no systemic resistance to trying it. So when someone’s stuck for an idea, that’s what they do. I mean, to the extent that it’s...

Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don’t sign anything.

I’m busy doing my job, and being a loudmouth doesn’t appeal to me as much as when I was younger and had the youthful delusion that I was smarter than everybody else.

If I’m working as an engineer for another band, the responsibility for brilliance pretty much rests on their shoulders. I think I’m pretty good, but I’m not good enough to turn a trout into a...

The only kind of restaurant I could imagine doing would be the extraordinarily snooty restaurant with three or four tables, and I would cook what I felt like cooking. And you could eat it or...

Buy groceries and feed yourself, even on the road.

If the label presents them with a contract that the band don’t want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same...

Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful...

There is a lot of use of ProTools in professional studios, but this is mostly for the special effects it allows, not for sound quality. These special effects soon fall out of fashion, and I...

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.

A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

I’m not really interested in participating in mainstream culture. Participating in the mainstream music business is, to me, like getting involved in a racket. There’s no way you can get involved in a racket and...

I don’t think anyone has exhausted the range of sound possible in a conventional rock band, but people do become slaves to their own easiest techniques.

New York has magnificent eating available, both in restaurants and in the materials available to home cooks in the many specialty markets.

No, not at all. I’m an atheist. You could say that I’m agnostic, but that’s just a certain kind of atheist (laughs). An atheist is someone who lacks a belief in a supernatural, and that’s...

Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument,...

My father was an expert hunter, so we ate a lot of wild game when I was growing up in Montana. That helped broaden my palate generally, but I know it informed my distaste for...

In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends’ bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record – the first thing I did that was an actual record.

Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients...

My dad, Frank Addison Albini, was a terrific shot with a rifle and had generally excellent hunting skills. While my dad loved hunting and fishing, he didn’t romanticize them. He was filling the freezer, not...

When I’m in a restaurant, I don’t eat red meat. It doesn’t taste like anything. But if a friend of mine is grilling stuff at his house, its almost always great.

As a recording engineer – someone who is deeply embroiled in the process of making records every day – you see trends and fads run through the social organization of the population of musicians in...

Shellac was asked to do a recreation of our first album, but we’ve always been a band that improvised our sets. That’s critical to the way that we function on stage. Whatever the mood takes...

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808...

Know what you’re trying to do before you do it. Turning knobs at random isn’t enlightening any more than throwing paint at a wall blindfolded will let you paint a nice picture.

The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged...

I think fashion is repulsive. The whole idea that someone else can make clothing that is supposed to be in style and make other people look good is ridiculous. It sickens me to think that...

The bands that have been the most important to me, and the records that have been the most important to me as a fan, have been records that surprised me for one reason or another.

Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this.

Almost any decent cook will make food by eye and taste. Virtually all of my family cooked that way.

I’m not a particularly good cook. Part of it is that it is the kind of cooking anybody could do if they bothered. It’s improvisational. I cook with whatever I have laying around.

Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I’ve found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.