Steve Albini: Alt.rocking all over the world

This year, Steve Albini is curating All Tomorrow's Parties - a festival for those who'd rather not listen to Starsailor. Ben Thompson meets the outspoken rocker

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All Tomorrow's Parties online

With his bands Big Black, Rapeman and now Shellac (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable), Steve Albini has drawn huge numbers of listeners into a sonic and ethical maelstrom. For anyone yet to be touched by his unique vision, Big Black's 1986 single "Il Duce" is a good place to start. This rousing tribute to the Italian leader who makes Silvio Berlusconi look a credit to his nation boasts the memorable hook line: "I am Benito, and I like my job."

In his parallel career as a "recordist" (he scorns the title of producer, believing it too grandiose), Albini's name has appeared on an imposing spectrum of the most vital rock records of the past 14 years, from the taut quasi-Latin stomp of the Pixies' Surfer Rosa to the visceral self-excoriation of Nirvana's In Utero, from the thrilling revelations of the Breeders' Pod and the punkabilly bustle of PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, to such "quiet is the new loud'' landmarks as Palace Music's Arise Therefore. In any race for mayor of the alt.rock underground, Albini would have few serious rivals.

Yet beyond his dual role as practitioner and catalyst, Steven Frank Albini fulfils a third function, more nebulous but equally fascinating, as keeper of the punk rock flame. How someone who thought Rapeman was a suitable name for a band could possibly wield any kind of moral authority will be a mystery to many, but thanks to his famously abrasive combination of fierce personal integrity and candour (this is the man who called Courtney Love a "psycho hose-beast'' long before that view became the consensus in the music industry), Albini somehow manages it.

Having played one of the best received sets at the 2000 event, Shellac were a natural choice to follow Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai and Tortoise to curate the visionary promoter Barry Hogan's All Tomorrow's Parties, Britain's most adventurous and uncompromising music festival. Since its inception in 1999, ATP has become a beacon for those whose idea of a lost musical weekend involves something more challenging than a choice of Starsailor or Travis.

Hogan's welcome note in the 2002 programme has an Albini-esque venom. "There will be none of the fools from Oasis parading around backstage and masturbating over their talentless friends," he assures arrivals at the festival site in Camber Sands Holiday Camp, "no sponsorship controlling what beer is on sale, and no VIP area... so the bands can't act like rock stars."

Hunting Albini down in the unlikely surroundings of a Pontins holiday camp proves no easy task. He appears to be taking his duties as host very seriously. A first interview appointment is cancelled because Albini "has to make sure all the bands are settled in". A second is moved to midnight because he "doesn't want to speak to anyone while a band is playing". Arriving at his spartan chalet quarters, after barnstorming sets from revitalised punk veterans Wire and Montreal's mighty agit-orchestra Godspeed You Black Emperor!, the door is answered by a man wearing only a scary pair of Y-fronts, who tells us, in broken English, that Steve has yet to return.

Albini is finally run to ground in the queue for the toilets, just after two o'clock on Sunday morning. He stands out by virtue of his distinctive apparel. Wearing a charcoal-coloured boiler suit with a big E on the back (in honour of his Chicago studio Electrical Audio, rather than any penchant for glee-inducing chemicals) and a fancy hat, he looks like a member of an early 80s German New Romantic synth duo.

A combination of jet lag, the smoky atmosphere and performing two electrifying sets with Shellac (they kick off each day of the festival to undermine hierarchical billing convention) has reduced his voice to a mechanical croak. Happily, the festival press officer's respectful suggestion that perhaps now might be a good time to do the interview is met with gracious assent.

"This is a Borsalino," Albini rasps, blithely tapping the brim of his hat as he strides through the night-time sea mist. "A beautiful Italian fedora, which was got for me by my beautiful girlfriend." Without pausing, Albini – now opening the door of his chalet – apologises for the overpowering smell of pizza ("We've been doing our own cooking," he notes dryly: "There's really not much food in England.") and embarks on a homely reminiscence.

"When my grandfather came to America, the symbol of having succeeded in your American enterprise – whatever it might have been – was that you would show up at church wearing a Borsalino. For me," he continues, suddenly wary that his choice of headgear might be interpreted as some kind of career-based triumphalism, "it's not so much a status symbol, more a great hat. And I like to wear great hats, in the same way'' – he indicates a not especially striking pair of black suede loafers – "that I like to wear great shoes.''

This epicurean individual – thinking warmly of his heritage, using words like "joyful" and "amazing" to describe the reception for the previous night's unheralded attractions, the Danielson Famile – is a long way from Albini's rather stern image. He seems untroubled by this. "I prefer to conduct myself in a way I am content with, and let everybody else draw their own conclusions," he says. "If someone gets something wrong, well, God bless 'em. I draw my own conclusions all the time. I'm sure I've got mistaken notions about people that I've been carrying around for decades."

Now sitting next to me on a two-seater sofa, Albini looks straight ahead rather than waste energy on eye contact, and expounds trenchantly and with good humour on the structural flaws in pop criticism. "The journalistic notion that there is a particular thrust to music at any moment in history – that certain categories of music are valid at one time, and others are not – is absurd," he insists, not unreasonably.

There's a strange moment in Shellac's set I want to ask him about, when Albini and bandmates Todd Trainer and Bob Weston stop playing and start to shout and stomp rhythmically, to great comic effect. "The song is about having an argument with a watch that has so many programmable features that you can't make it tell the time," Albini explains. "The original idea was that there would be a little interruption in the music where we would get mad and start scolding our equipment, but we tried it that way and it sort of bummed us out."

Presumably because your guitar is doing its best? "It's definitely not the weak link in the chain," he grins, almost amiably.

The celebrated Albini temperament makes only one appearance, when he responds rather snappishly to the suggestion that the ATP set-up he and Hogan have refined to a remarkable pitch this year – no corporate sponsorship, all bands paid equally – actually resembles a utopian socialist community. You can accuse Steve Albini of many things; just don't call him an idealist to his face.

All Tomorrow's Parties, weekend two, today to Sunday, Camber Sands Pontins, East Sussex. A handful of weekend tickets remain at £100 (available from www.wayahead.com/atp)