Nirvana’s engineer/producer was 61

Steve Albini

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Steve Albini, the legendarily demanding producer/engineer and frontman of raucous indie rock bands Shellac and Big Black, has died at the age of 61. According to an employee at Albini’s Electric Audio Recordings Studio in Chicago, Albini died of a heart attack on Tuesday evening (May 7).

Although he despised the term “producer” and preferred “engineer” instead, Albini said in an interview in 2018 that he had worked on more than 2,000 albums, mostly for underground or indie bands, but also notably on projects by two of the most important and influential bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In addition to recording Nirvana’s last full studio album, 1993 In uteroHe also worked on the popular 1988 album Surfer Rosa by one of late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain’s favorite bands, the Pixies. Constantly switching back and forth between albums by top label acts (PJ Harvey’s stunning 1993 album). Get rid of meBush’s Razorblade case) and popular indie bands from his native Chicago (Urge Overkill, The Jesus Lizard, Tar), Albini was also a prolific musician in his own right with a number of hardcore and noise bands, including Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac.

Born on July 22, 1962 in Pasadena, California, Albini positioned himself as a staunch outsider to the mainstream music industry, which he viewed as exploitative, and refused to accept producers’ traditional royalties on any of the albums he included in his studio in Chicago.

Shellac was ready to release their first album in a decade. To all trainsnext week, and had a series of shows booked in England in June, followed by a series of US dates in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles in July.

Often working on dozens of albums a year, Albini has recently maintained his rapid pace, teaming up again in 2022 with folk singer Nina Nastasia, with whom he has frequently collaborated, and has worked on albums by Black Midi, Spare in the past Snare, Liturgy and Code Orange 2 years.

This story first appeared on Billboard.com.