Albini Apologia
After some reflection, Murder Pop just wanted to offer our most sincere apologies ever to all the Steve Albini fans we upset with our coverage of the things he did, said, and refused to respond to request for comment on while he was still alive.
It was inconsiderate of us not to show more respect following the death of an iconic legend of music who was also a self described voyeur of child sexual abuse material. His lifelong defense of his “old friend” convicted child pornographer Peter Sotos as a “lovely guy” who Albini would help “do whatever he wants to do” pales in comparison to the fact that he recorded your favorite bands and made some famous and beloved records. We’re so, so sorry.
The fact that he himself showed no respect for the dead (and failed in his 2018 New Years’ Resolution to stop thinking up new ways to abuse the corpses of people he didn’t respect) is in no way a reflection on his character, which he displayed in comments like “decency toward the living obliges us not to lie in… defense [of the dead].”
We should never forget Steve Albini’s tireless advocacy for the victims of child sexual abuse, which he in no way enabled by defending Peter Sotos, who said that “sales from his books go directly towards funding child pornographers.”
The undeniable evidence of Albini’s advocacy for children as part of the conversation he himself said was overdue about his “edgelord shit” can be easily found by searching his prolific close to 20,000 public twitter posts.
The performative nature of his activism is obvious… we were called “anti trans” for our comments on his position on trans people, who he said people were trying to kill. Trans people were so important to him that he first mentioned them in these 2017 and 2018 tweets one year apart from each other. In just a few short years he became a pseudo-expert on complex medical issues he seemingly knew nothing about, deploying the words he knew he needed to deploy in order to maintain power with his tribe, which fed his career recording outsider artists.
The phenomenon of Woke Albini first emerged following backlash to his use of racial epithets to describe an encounter he had with Odd Future. In an August 2011 post on the Electrical Audio forum, Albini complained that the group fronted by Tyler, the Creator were “niggering everything in sight,” referring to the groups own language on a shuttle bus.
Steve, then a 48-year-old man who worked in the music industry his entire life and made a career out of bands like “Rapeman” and “Run Nigger Run,” said that he was confused about the difference between the hard R and the soft R. Highly believable.
In the years following this event, Albini began to adopt the persona of those who called him out for his behavior because he recognized that they had the power to destroy his career, and Albini was a man who enjoyed wielding his power to abuse others as he had for so many decades. His fans liked it, too.
We were accused in multiple places of being transphobic because we included a screenshot of Albini’s performative Woke-ocity related to transpeople, including by a self described “licensed mental health” expert who disputed our report, written by a doctor, on the nature of puberty blockers. We looked him up - he was a therapist and social worker who has no training or expertise in pharmacology of any kind, and no legal power to prescribe or recommend medications, which didn’t stop him from doing so, and arguing with us about it in an attempt to flex the same kind of power we describe above.
One abusive Albini fan (who thought Murder Pop might be our real name) said that deleting evidence of Chris Halls’ participation in the Electrical Audio forums even from the Wayback Machine is not “support” for the now convicted child predator, who obviously had no friends on the forum in which he was a regular participant, and couldn’t possibly be engaged in similar activities that a digital paper trail might help to uncover.
We remain firmly anti censorship; however, if you hurl abuse at us, insult other people in our comments section (particularly members of the Murder Pop Crew), or spread misinformation in our comments you will not be allowed to stay but instead, will be deep fried in a vat of hot oil, and served to our first 100 customers. Just another tasty treat from our night manager Lucas, and the rest of the gang here at Murder Pop Records, which by the way is... where the name Murder Pop comes from.
