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POWELL INCURS WRATH OF STEVE ALBINI AFTER REQUESTING SAMPLE CLEARANCE

Diagonal boss uses rant as artwork for 'Insomniac'.

Powell recieved an earful from Steve Albini after emailing to request clearance for a sample.

The Diagonal producer’s latest single for XL Recordings, ‘Insomniac’, contains a sample of Albini introducing a song during a Big Black live performance.

According to the Quietus, Powell emailed Albini to seek his approval. Although, Albini gave Powell his permission, he stopped far short of giving his approval.

He writes in the email: “I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth. So I am against what you're into, and an enemy of where you come from.”

Powell responded by asking for permission to use the email as artwork for the release. “Still don’t care,” replied Albini.

The artwork, featuring the email, has been put on a huge billboard on London’s Commercial Street earlier today.

Went to see the Steve Albini billboard and bumped into @odbpowell. Fucking brilliant. pic.twitter.com/loBy7UXqAr

— Jen Long (@jenlong) September 29, 2015

The full text is as follow:

“I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music,” he wrote back. “I’ve always detested mechanized dance music, its stupid simplicity, the clubs where it was played, the people who went to those clubs, the drugs they took, the shit they liked to talk about, the clothes they wore, the battles they fought amongst each other... basically all of it, 100 percent hated every scrap.”

Shifting into full old-man-shouting-at-cloud mode, Albini continued: “The electronic music I liked was radical and different, shit like the White Noise, Xenakis, Suicide, Kraftwerk, and the earliest stuff form Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and DAF. When that scene and those people got co-opted by dance/club music I felt like we’d lost a war. I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth. So I am against what you’re into, and an enemy of where you come from.”

But as for the vocal sample, Albini had “no problem” with letting him use it. “I haven’t bothered listening to the links, mainly because I’m in a hotel with crappy internet at the moment but also because it probably wouldn’t be to my taste and that wouldn’t help either of us. In other words, you’re welcome to do whatever you like with whatever of mine you’ve gotten your hands on. Don’t care. Enjoy yourself.”

[via the Quietus]