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I'm not sure a lot people know that Albini ended up washing his hands of his work with Nirvana. After the recordings were wrapped and the mixes were done, Kurt

I'm not sure a lot people know that Albini ended up washing his hands of his work with Nirvana. After the recordings were wrapped and the mixes were done, Kurt was really unhappy with some of the sounds. If memory serves it was the vocals and the bass. They ended up doing some overdubs and sharpening things up in the low end in mastering. The very thing Albini specifically said he didn't want them to do. I personally think the results speak for themselves. In Utero is a FANTASTIC rock record. I can't help but wonder what the original would have sounded like though...

Exmoor 5y ago
There are Albini rough mixes out there. Not sure where to suggest looking for them (phone posting), but I no imagine they're not too hard to find.
bwoodward 5y ago
You can find his mixes on Nirvana's youtube channel --- Heart Shaped Box [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pwGlgQz2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pwGlgQz2E
- jhap 5y ago
  Can someone with more experience help me recognize the differences between this version and the released version? I'm having trouble hearing them.
  - bwoodward 5y ago
    You might like this video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Gp8up3l8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Gp8up3l8Y
    - gregsadetsky 5y ago
      Thank you so much for posting this
  - hluska 5y ago
    First off, that’s cool too!! If you want to get into it, start by putting the released version on repeat and listen to it a few times in a row. To start, focus on Kurt Cobain’s voice, specifically where it ‘sits’ in the mix. Then, switch to Steve Albini’s version. When I hear Steve Albini’s version, Kurt Cobain’s voice is less pronounced. What do you think?? If that helps, I can point out more differences. Or, maybe you can point out some you hear?
  - mixedbit 5y ago
    If you are using laptop speakers you may heave troubles hearing any difference, try headphones instead.
  - parenthesis 5y ago
    To me the differences matter much less than the fact that after about a minute and a half you've basically heard the whole song, and then I just get bored. Which is funny, as there are many very repetitive tracks I like with long running times which never bore me. (Random example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbdzLgwME0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbdzLgwME0 .)
- ch4s3 5y ago
  I can’t put my finger on it but that just sounds wrong to me.
  - jdelman 5y ago
    Kurt's vocals on the verses are panned left as if he's standing there. They're double-tracked on the album mix, which was a technique John Lennon used that Kurt admired. The reverb really sounds like a room. Guitars are definitely overdubbed on the final mix with the distortion cranked up, rather than sounding like one gentler guitar. I would say the bass seems not quiet but like it's "hiding" behind the guitars - it's not cutting through the mix the way it does on the album version. Seems to be a different guitar take for the solo - there's a pretty noticeable wah-wah effect on the guitar solo in Albini's mix. Overall Albini's mix sounds much more live, which is exactly what he had in mind before he recorded with the band. The final mix is compressed, balanced, radio-friendly: it sounds more like it could fit on Nevermind than some of the other songs on In Utero.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Left Kurt is the most noticeably odd thing with headphones, it just feels too much like he’s right off to my side. It’s just not the sound of the band in my head. The bass is noticeably different too, but doesn’t feel as wrong against my head cannon of their sound.
      - pmarreck 5y ago
        https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=headcanon https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=headcanon
        ch4s3 5y ago
        In my head Kurt has a sound and presence that doesn’t necessarily match the whole body of their work, but makes sense to me when I think about their songs.
    - 5y ago
- StopTheWorld 5y ago
  Pixies Nirvana
- keeglin 5y ago
  Thank you for this! That just brightened my evening. It's sounding _incredible_.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Impressive, it's a lot heavier and ~indie. Strange to revisit these times.
  - bwoodward 5y ago
    if you like a less polished sound, you should tuck into the Nirvana demos [1]. Back in the day it was really difficult to acquire these things (mainly trading or buying CDRs later on). Nirvana is an excellent rabbit hole band, though. There are plenty of b-sides, bootlegs, demos, technically unreleased tracks, compilations, etc etc. They've released box sets that have pretty much everything besides the live bootlegs. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoBcTBkNp94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoBcTBkNp94
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      I'm not sure I prefer Albini's mix, I'm still missing the released (commercial) mix. Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times). And the demo you linked is closer to the final version in that regard, sounds more like Nirvana to me. Thanks for the link, I had no idea these were online. In a totally other genre, Michael Jackson Thriller vocal studo outtakes are breathtaking.
      - eggsbenedict 5y ago
        >Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times) I'm a professional record producer and songwriter. Here are my thoughts: Very likely it's the other way around. Albini is notoriously hard-headed about refusing to use compression on tracks and mixes. He's gone on record about how compressors ruin the tone, expressivity, and micro-dynamics of recorded sounds. Regardless of whether you agree with that, and he does have a point, compression performs one job admirably: it prevents dynamic sounds from unexpectedly popping out of a determined dynamic range. This is a disagreement lots of people have had with Albini's method, and he's also a little prickly about these things. He has an artistic vision of "properly" recording bands and mixing them in a way that doesn't adulterate or modify their live sound. In other words, he tries to get the final sound just through exacting microphone placement while recording, and applies the absolute minimum of post-processing. However, the consensus in commercial record production at this point is that signal processing such as compression, distortion, and equalization, even in dramatic quantity, can create a more compelling audio result. Albini certainly views this as leading to a decline in fidelity (in the etymological sense of truth), and possibly as leading to a decline in artistic integrity (heavily debated). A couple final ideas: - In a recorded-music world, what constitutes an "authentic" or "true" sound? - Should a studio operator (recording/mixing) aim to respect the real-world sound of the artist, or the intentions of the artist? How do you identify the intentions of an artist?
- MrScruff 5y ago
  Oh that's cool! I remember hearing about this mix at the time and wondering how it would sound. I much prefer it, way more in keeping with the indie 'live' vibe of the rest of the album and it feels darker/more menacing because of the greater contrast between the verses and chorus. I actually always felt the original track stood out (in a bad way) on the album and it's interesting to hear how much of that was introduced by the remix. The recording style Albini uses here was also in evidence with another classic rock album he references here, PJ Harvey's 'Rid of Me'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeP-AHFk-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeP-AHFk-s Some people (eg. Elvis Costello) hate this 'naturalistic' style, but I think the overproduced style that dominates radio often strips tracks of their personality.
  - pschuegr 5y ago
    Got a source for that Elvis Costello opinion? I'd like to read more.
    - MrScruff 5y ago
      https://guitar.com/news/music-news/elvis-costello-steve-albini-pj-harvey-rid-of-me/ https://guitar.com/news/music-news/elvis-costello-steve-albi... My take is that as a singer songwriter he can't stand the fact that Albini makes the drums and guitars as prominent as the vocals, and gives the vocals so much room ambience. I think it works fantastically on a rock album that's supposed to be dark and brooding anyway.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Interesting. There are definitely interesting aspects but the volume gating(?) on the start of the chorus are a No-no for me It definitely feel more "indie" but not 100% in a good way for me.
daydream 5y ago
In addition to bootlegs of the rough mixes you can also check out the official 20th anniversary vinyl reissue, remixed by Albini from the original masters. https://www.nirvana.com/album/in-utero-2013-mix-2lp/ https://www.nirvana.com/album/in-utero-2013-mix-2lp/
strunz 5y ago
Not surprising considering Nevermind is one of the best sounding albums of all time. I personally give Butch Vig a large part of the. refit for getting the best out of the band and really making an incredible album. Hard to believe it's the same band as Bleach.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Butch Vig had such a large influence in my life as a teenager. For those that never paid attention to the liner notes/credits on their music, Butch was a producer on so so many bands.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Plus, he's in Garbage, a great band in its own right, with an amazing sound. Vig defines the post-grunge sound that took over rock in the 90s: powerful choruses, vocals up front, tight production. Very different from the garage sound of proper grunge.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  > of all time This is a little extreme. "Teen spirit", "Come as you are", "Lithium" are great, but "On a plain" and other heavier numbers are jarringly plasticky.
- Optimal_Persona 5y ago
  As the mixer of "Nevermind", Andy Wallace deserves a lot of credit for the finished sound. Both Vig and the band weren't crazy about Vig's initial mixes. Between Nevermind and producing/engineering/mixing Jeff Buckley's "Grace", Andy Wallace did as much to define of '90s rock as anyone else, and has done phenomenal work before and since.
  - wsc981 5y ago
    Jeff Buckley’s Grace is an awesome album, much recommended if people haven’t heard it yet.
throwaway095209 5y ago
vlunkr 5y ago
He worked on the 2013 remaster. Doesn't really seem like he washed his hands of it.
- discordance 5y ago
  Funny that... "I do not like remixing other engineer's recordings, and I do not like recording things for somebody else to remix. I have never been satisfied with either version of that methodology. Remixing is for talentless pussies who don't know how to tune a drum or point a microphone."
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Wouldn't the remaster have been primarily his recordings?
  - toyg 5y ago
    Albini, like many greats of rock & roll, should always be taken with a massive grain of salt when he speaks. In the end they'll always go where the money is.
    - copperx 5y ago
      Not true. Also, he didn't remix anything. They just published his unreleased mixes.
pipeline_peak 5y ago
You ask for Mr Slint to record your lp, you get a lo fi lp. I know Kurt liked the Pixies, but after something as high end as Nevermind, who knows what he was looking for.
- rdiddly 5y ago
  The irony of your calling him Mr. Slint is that the GOOD Slint album was done by someone else.
jollybean 5y ago
I don't like In Untero compared to Nevermind, it feels a smidge too overproduced and less raw. I really wonder what it would have sounded like were it to have been the same producer.
- jghn 5y ago
  Huh. It's funny as I always had the opposite thought. To me Nevermind sounds too polished and clean. When In Utero came out I remember being excited that it brought out a more raw sound that I felt they had lost. Different strokes and all that.
vba616 5y ago
>Kurt was really unhappy with some of the sounds I think I read somewhere that P.J. Harvey wasn't happy with the way "Rid of Me" came out - but I thought it was incredible and nothing afterwards really compares.
- MrScruff 5y ago
  Hmm, I've read the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rid_of_Me#Recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rid_of_Me#Recording
  - moomin 5y ago
    I think the confusion stems from the existence of “4-Track Demos”, but in practice Albini really liked the original demos and encouraged Harvey to turn them into an album. My only real complaint about the production on “Rid of Me” is the obnoxious volume shifts on the title track and “Highway 61 Revisited” which seem to neither reflect what the live performances sounded like nor accommodate home listening.
    - MrScruff 5y ago
      I think that's subjective. It probably doesn't sound like a live performance would, but it does probably reflect fairly well what you'd hear if you were in the room with them rehearsing. Listening to the album again now it's such a relief to hear a recording with such dynamic range, not the appallingly over-compressed loudness wars derived style we're subjected to now.
      - moomin 4y ago
        Oh, in general the production is fabulous, and you’re absolute right that over-compression has ruined more than decade’s worth of albums, but I’d rather listen to a random live cut of Rid of Me. Such a great song.
    - thom 5y ago
      Oh man, I just find the title track absolutely thrilling, my whole body is tense building up to the chorus, partly because it's so extreme. And it doesn't seem unrepresentative of what she was _trying_ to achieve - I don't know many other performers who use breaths and whispers as artfully as she does. I think it's just hard to achieve such extremes as part of a wider live set.
toyg 5y ago
> In Utero is a FANTASTIC rock record Mh. As a teenager at the time, I always thought Nevermind was the real deal. Then the whole media phenomenon took over, so In Utero could have been shite and still sell bazillions - it was promoted massively. That's not to say it was shite, but IMHO it wasn't as perfect as Nevermind.
- lastdong 5y ago
  I recommend Incesticide as one of the hidden raw gems. The whole Nirvana discography is strong (maybe the mellow MTV Unplugged hits a different tone).
salmo 5y ago
They remixed the singles, really making them more “radio friendly”. Compressed, polished, and out of whack with the un-remixed “lesser” tracks. The punk folks around Nirvana were surprised with how pliable they were with Geffen. Albini was pissed and wanted his name off of it. He wasn’t easy to work with. Abrasive, rude, rigidly principled. He’s mellowed out with age, but really hasn’t touched much major label stuff since the 90s, if any. If you listen to the original mixes on the reissue you hear how much more consistent it feels as an album. And I won’t lie. I have a bias. I love the quality of Albini’s work. Crisp and raw and uses the whole spectrum. And those drums… Jesus Lizard, early Pixies, this album, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me are more well known work he’s done that is great. Bush was awful. His band Shellac w/ the mentioned Bob Weston is f’n incredible. These days, he works a super reasonable flat rate and will record anyone. Had friends who recorded at his Chicago studio. Brilliant guy.

Exmoor 5y ago

There are Albini rough mixes out there. Not sure where to suggest looking for them (phone posting), but I no imagine they're not too hard to find.

bwoodward 5y ago

You can find his mixes on Nirvana's youtube channel --- Heart Shaped Box [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pwGlgQz2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9pwGlgQz2E

jhap 5y ago
Can someone with more experience help me recognize the differences between this version and the released version? I'm having trouble hearing them.
- bwoodward 5y ago
  You might like this video -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Gp8up3l8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Gp8up3l8Y
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    Thank you so much for posting this
- hluska 5y ago
  First off, that’s cool too!! If you want to get into it, start by putting the released version on repeat and listen to it a few times in a row. To start, focus on Kurt Cobain’s voice, specifically where it ‘sits’ in the mix. Then, switch to Steve Albini’s version. When I hear Steve Albini’s version, Kurt Cobain’s voice is less pronounced. What do you think?? If that helps, I can point out more differences. Or, maybe you can point out some you hear?
- mixedbit 5y ago
  If you are using laptop speakers you may heave troubles hearing any difference, try headphones instead.
- parenthesis 5y ago
  To me the differences matter much less than the fact that after about a minute and a half you've basically heard the whole song, and then I just get bored. Which is funny, as there are many very repetitive tracks I like with long running times which never bore me. (Random example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbdzLgwME0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbdzLgwME0 .)
ch4s3 5y ago
I can’t put my finger on it but that just sounds wrong to me.
- jdelman 5y ago
  Kurt's vocals on the verses are panned left as if he's standing there. They're double-tracked on the album mix, which was a technique John Lennon used that Kurt admired. The reverb really sounds like a room. Guitars are definitely overdubbed on the final mix with the distortion cranked up, rather than sounding like one gentler guitar. I would say the bass seems not quiet but like it's "hiding" behind the guitars - it's not cutting through the mix the way it does on the album version. Seems to be a different guitar take for the solo - there's a pretty noticeable wah-wah effect on the guitar solo in Albini's mix. Overall Albini's mix sounds much more live, which is exactly what he had in mind before he recorded with the band. The final mix is compressed, balanced, radio-friendly: it sounds more like it could fit on Nevermind than some of the other songs on In Utero.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Left Kurt is the most noticeably odd thing with headphones, it just feels too much like he’s right off to my side. It’s just not the sound of the band in my head. The bass is noticeably different too, but doesn’t feel as wrong against my head cannon of their sound.
    - pmarreck 5y ago
      https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=headcanon https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=headcanon
      - ch4s3 5y ago
        In my head Kurt has a sound and presence that doesn’t necessarily match the whole body of their work, but makes sense to me when I think about their songs.
  - 5y ago
StopTheWorld 5y ago
Pixies Nirvana
keeglin 5y ago
Thank you for this! That just brightened my evening. It's sounding _incredible_.
agumonkey 5y ago
Impressive, it's a lot heavier and ~indie. Strange to revisit these times.
- bwoodward 5y ago
  if you like a less polished sound, you should tuck into the Nirvana demos [1]. Back in the day it was really difficult to acquire these things (mainly trading or buying CDRs later on). Nirvana is an excellent rabbit hole band, though. There are plenty of b-sides, bootlegs, demos, technically unreleased tracks, compilations, etc etc. They've released box sets that have pretty much everything besides the live bootlegs. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoBcTBkNp94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoBcTBkNp94
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I'm not sure I prefer Albini's mix, I'm still missing the released (commercial) mix. Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times). And the demo you linked is closer to the final version in that regard, sounds more like Nirvana to me. Thanks for the link, I had no idea these were online. In a totally other genre, Michael Jackson Thriller vocal studo outtakes are breathtaking.
    - eggsbenedict 5y ago
      >Somehow I find albini's version too toyed with (some instruments pops out at times) I'm a professional record producer and songwriter. Here are my thoughts: Very likely it's the other way around. Albini is notoriously hard-headed about refusing to use compression on tracks and mixes. He's gone on record about how compressors ruin the tone, expressivity, and micro-dynamics of recorded sounds. Regardless of whether you agree with that, and he does have a point, compression performs one job admirably: it prevents dynamic sounds from unexpectedly popping out of a determined dynamic range. This is a disagreement lots of people have had with Albini's method, and he's also a little prickly about these things. He has an artistic vision of "properly" recording bands and mixing them in a way that doesn't adulterate or modify their live sound. In other words, he tries to get the final sound just through exacting microphone placement while recording, and applies the absolute minimum of post-processing. However, the consensus in commercial record production at this point is that signal processing such as compression, distortion, and equalization, even in dramatic quantity, can create a more compelling audio result. Albini certainly views this as leading to a decline in fidelity (in the etymological sense of truth), and possibly as leading to a decline in artistic integrity (heavily debated). A couple final ideas: - In a recorded-music world, what constitutes an "authentic" or "true" sound? - Should a studio operator (recording/mixing) aim to respect the real-world sound of the artist, or the intentions of the artist? How do you identify the intentions of an artist?
MrScruff 5y ago
Oh that's cool! I remember hearing about this mix at the time and wondering how it would sound. I much prefer it, way more in keeping with the indie 'live' vibe of the rest of the album and it feels darker/more menacing because of the greater contrast between the verses and chorus. I actually always felt the original track stood out (in a bad way) on the album and it's interesting to hear how much of that was introduced by the remix. The recording style Albini uses here was also in evidence with another classic rock album he references here, PJ Harvey's 'Rid of Me'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeP-AHFk-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVeP-AHFk-s Some people (eg. Elvis Costello) hate this 'naturalistic' style, but I think the overproduced style that dominates radio often strips tracks of their personality.
- pschuegr 5y ago
  Got a source for that Elvis Costello opinion? I'd like to read more.
  - MrScruff 5y ago
    https://guitar.com/news/music-news/elvis-costello-steve-albini-pj-harvey-rid-of-me/ https://guitar.com/news/music-news/elvis-costello-steve-albi... My take is that as a singer songwriter he can't stand the fact that Albini makes the drums and guitars as prominent as the vocals, and gives the vocals so much room ambience. I think it works fantastically on a rock album that's supposed to be dark and brooding anyway.
raverbashing 5y ago
Interesting. There are definitely interesting aspects but the volume gating(?) on the start of the chorus are a No-no for me It definitely feel more "indie" but not 100% in a good way for me.

daydream 5y ago

In addition to bootlegs of the rough mixes you can also check out the official 20th anniversary vinyl reissue, remixed by Albini from the original masters. https://www.nirvana.com/album/in-utero-2013-mix-2lp/ https://www.nirvana.com/album/in-utero-2013-mix-2lp/

strunz 5y ago

Not surprising considering Nevermind is one of the best sounding albums of all time. I personally give Butch Vig a large part of the. refit for getting the best out of the band and really making an incredible album. Hard to believe it's the same band as Bleach.

dylan604 5y ago
Butch Vig had such a large influence in my life as a teenager. For those that never paid attention to the liner notes/credits on their music, Butch was a producer on so so many bands.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  Plus, he's in Garbage, a great band in its own right, with an amazing sound. Vig defines the post-grunge sound that took over rock in the 90s: powerful choruses, vocals up front, tight production. Very different from the garage sound of proper grunge.
prionassembly 5y ago
> of all time This is a little extreme. "Teen spirit", "Come as you are", "Lithium" are great, but "On a plain" and other heavier numbers are jarringly plasticky.
Optimal_Persona 5y ago
As the mixer of "Nevermind", Andy Wallace deserves a lot of credit for the finished sound. Both Vig and the band weren't crazy about Vig's initial mixes. Between Nevermind and producing/engineering/mixing Jeff Buckley's "Grace", Andy Wallace did as much to define of '90s rock as anyone else, and has done phenomenal work before and since.
- wsc981 5y ago
  Jeff Buckley’s Grace is an awesome album, much recommended if people haven’t heard it yet.

throwaway095209 5y ago

vlunkr 5y ago

He worked on the 2013 remaster. Doesn't really seem like he washed his hands of it.

discordance 5y ago
Funny that... "I do not like remixing other engineer's recordings, and I do not like recording things for somebody else to remix. I have never been satisfied with either version of that methodology. Remixing is for talentless pussies who don't know how to tune a drum or point a microphone."
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Wouldn't the remaster have been primarily his recordings?
- toyg 5y ago
  Albini, like many greats of rock & roll, should always be taken with a massive grain of salt when he speaks. In the end they'll always go where the money is.
  - copperx 5y ago
    Not true. Also, he didn't remix anything. They just published his unreleased mixes.

pipeline_peak 5y ago

You ask for Mr Slint to record your lp, you get a lo fi lp. I know Kurt liked the Pixies, but after something as high end as Nevermind, who knows what he was looking for.

rdiddly 5y ago
The irony of your calling him Mr. Slint is that the GOOD Slint album was done by someone else.

jollybean 5y ago

I don't like In Untero compared to Nevermind, it feels a smidge too overproduced and less raw. I really wonder what it would have sounded like were it to have been the same producer.

jghn 5y ago
Huh. It's funny as I always had the opposite thought. To me Nevermind sounds too polished and clean. When In Utero came out I remember being excited that it brought out a more raw sound that I felt they had lost. Different strokes and all that.

vba616 5y ago

>Kurt was really unhappy with some of the sounds I think I read somewhere that P.J. Harvey wasn't happy with the way "Rid of Me" came out - but I thought it was incredible and nothing afterwards really compares.

MrScruff 5y ago
Hmm, I've read the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rid_of_Me#Recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rid_of_Me#Recording
- moomin 5y ago
  I think the confusion stems from the existence of “4-Track Demos”, but in practice Albini really liked the original demos and encouraged Harvey to turn them into an album. My only real complaint about the production on “Rid of Me” is the obnoxious volume shifts on the title track and “Highway 61 Revisited” which seem to neither reflect what the live performances sounded like nor accommodate home listening.
  - MrScruff 5y ago
    I think that's subjective. It probably doesn't sound like a live performance would, but it does probably reflect fairly well what you'd hear if you were in the room with them rehearsing. Listening to the album again now it's such a relief to hear a recording with such dynamic range, not the appallingly over-compressed loudness wars derived style we're subjected to now.
    - moomin 4y ago
      Oh, in general the production is fabulous, and you’re absolute right that over-compression has ruined more than decade’s worth of albums, but I’d rather listen to a random live cut of Rid of Me. Such a great song.
  - thom 5y ago
    Oh man, I just find the title track absolutely thrilling, my whole body is tense building up to the chorus, partly because it's so extreme. And it doesn't seem unrepresentative of what she was _trying_ to achieve - I don't know many other performers who use breaths and whispers as artfully as she does. I think it's just hard to achieve such extremes as part of a wider live set.

toyg 5y ago

> In Utero is a FANTASTIC rock record Mh. As a teenager at the time, I always thought Nevermind was the real deal. Then the whole media phenomenon took over, so In Utero could have been shite and still sell bazillions - it was promoted massively. That's not to say it was shite, but IMHO it wasn't as perfect as Nevermind.

lastdong 5y ago
I recommend Incesticide as one of the hidden raw gems. The whole Nirvana discography is strong (maybe the mellow MTV Unplugged hits a different tone).

salmo 5y ago

They remixed the singles, really making them more “radio friendly”. Compressed, polished, and out of whack with the un-remixed “lesser” tracks. The punk folks around Nirvana were surprised with how pliable they were with Geffen. Albini was pissed and wanted his name off of it. He wasn’t easy to work with. Abrasive, rude, rigidly principled. He’s mellowed out with age, but really hasn’t touched much major label stuff since the 90s, if any. If you listen to the original mixes on the reissue you hear how much more consistent it feels as an album. And I won’t lie. I have a bias. I love the quality of Albini’s work. Crisp and raw and uses the whole spectrum. And those drums… Jesus Lizard, early Pixies, this album, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me are more well known work he’s done that is great. Bush was awful. His band Shellac w/ the mentioned Bob Weston is f’n incredible. These days, he works a super reasonable flat rate and will record anyone. Had friends who recorded at his Chicago studio. Brilliant guy.