Nirvana Pixies engineer/producer Steve Albini dies aged 61

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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.

Punk rock in the truest sense of the word – anti-authoritarian, not at all afraid to offend (see the aforementioned name of one of his bands, which he later said was a “careless” choice that could not be justified), proudly combative and principled – Albini rightly made uncommercial, deafening noise with his groups, but also consciously eschewed the traditional trappings of the music industry. Big Black, whose sound mixed guttural, distorted vocals, pounding industrial drums and buzzing guitars, never had a manager, booked their own tours and disbanded on the eve of the release of their second album. Albini also insisted on not being credited in the album liner notes, but when he was named he requested “sound engineer” rather than producer.

Cobain was determined to record with Albini for his band’s second major label album because he captured the stripped-down, raw sound he had made famous on his previous productions, despite his label’s strong opposition to hiring him, as it feared a withdrawal from the band’s mega label. Platinum selling loud-quiet-loud sound. For a time, however, he was equally known for his often scathing, rude broadsides against what he saw as phonies in the industry, including an infamous letter to Chicago Reader Critic Bill Wyman in 1994, calling the Smashing Pumpkins “ultimately insignificant” and Liz Phair “a damn chore to listen to” in a column entitled “Three Pandering Sluts and Their Music-Press Stooge.”

As mentioned in a 2023 Guardian In profile, Albini enjoyed being in the eye, sometimes playing the Big Black song “Jordan Minnesota” about an alleged child sex ring in that city, while pretending to be one of the victims of the attack. He also briefly fronted a band called Run N-er Run, which released a single in 1985 called “Pray I Don’t Kill You Faggot,” a song that the provocateur told the newspaper was embarrassing: “That I don’t expect mercy from anyone on this.”

Although he sometimes lashed out at bands he’d worked with before – including once describing the Pixies as “four cows more concerned with being led around by their nose rings” – Albini’s indie bona fides kept him going His lack of nonsense nature involved working on albums by a who’s who of 1990s underground acts from Jawbreaker to Silkworm, Brise-Glace, Killdozer, Gastr del Sol, Smog, Pansy Division and Low among many others.

Although he sometimes claimed he would work with anyone who could afford the fee for his studio time, Albini’s output in the early 2000s was equally impressive and extensive, including dozens of albums and singles from artists such as Jon Spencer, “Blues Explosion,” ” Man” or “Astro-Man?” , Zeni Geva, Robbie Fulks, Mogwai, Flogging Molly, The Breeders, thank God! Black Emperor, Cheap Trick, Gogol Bordello, Joanna Newsome, The Stooges, Manic Street Preachers and many more.

For a time, Albini became equally known for his often caustic comments and unsparing attacks on what he saw as the bloated music industry and groups he considered to be talent-poor, but all in one Twitter spree 2021 He apologized for some of his previous comments and dealt with the pain caused by his perceived principled stance.

“Many of the things I said and did from an ignorant, privileged position are clearly terrible and I regret them. No one is obligated to overlook this, and I feel obligated to redeem myself… A project that I have taken on little by little as I have matured, developed and learned over time. I expect no mercy and honestly feel that I and others of my generation have not been given enough blame for words and behavior that have ultimately contributed to the coarsening of society.”

He continued the mea culpa and took responsibility for inspiring what he called “Edgelord bullshit,” writing: “For me and many of my colleagues, we miscalculated. We thought the great battles for equality and inclusivity had been won and that society would eventually express this, so we did no harm with contrarianism, shock, sarcasm or irony. If anything, we tried to emphasize the banality, the everyday nonchalance about our shared history with the cruel, while at the same time indulging in the tacit *mistaken* idea that things were getting better… Believe me, I’ve had many Punishers hit performances and I feel sorry for anyone who isn’t me but still had to endure them.”

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.

Albini – also an award-winning poker player – often worked on dozens of albums a year and has recently kept up his torrid pace, teaming up again in 2022 with folk singer Nina Nastasia, with whom he was a frequent collaborator, and on albums by Black Midi and Spare worked on Snare, Liturgy and Code Orange in the last two years.