"Across a career as an artist, producer, and recording engineer that changed the shape of modern rock music, Steve Albini turned messy anger like mine into high art. He rejected perfection and taught a generation of musicians and fans how to scream back at the assholes who preached otherwise."⁠ ⁠ On a technical level, Albini’s productions were considered “messy,” with lots of “mistakes” and missed opportunities for studio trickery, but that was their soul. This anti-sheen philosophy extended to his deep distrust of the music industry’s Faustian promise of stardom. He writes about the constrictions of a record in his revered 1993 instructional “The Problem With Music,” using a “faceless industry lackey” holding a contract on the other side of a septic trench as an allegory for a greedy industry that pits young talent against each other — only for the winner to be held hostage in a state of creative limbo.⁠ ⁠ “He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, ‘Actually, I think you need a lit...