Looking for better distribution of their records, Big Black negotiated a deal with Homestead Records. Gerard Cosloy, who had befriended Albini through writing for "Matter" and gone on to work at Homestead, negotiated an unorthodox deal for the band: Big Black merely licensed their recordings to Homestead for specific lengths of time, rather than the label retaining the rights to the recordings as was typical. Further, the band took no advance payments, paid for their own recordings, and signed no contracts. Durango later remarked that "We came from a punk perspective — we did not want to get sucked into a corporate culture where basically you're signing a contract because you don't trust the other person to live up to their word. We had ideals, and that was one of our ideals." The band members figured that if a record company were going to cheat them, they would be able to do so with or without a contract because the band could not afford to defend themselves.