Indie rock icon was 61

Steve Albini, the influential underground rock figure best known as the frontman of bands such as Shellac and Big Black, died on Tuesday, May 7, at the age of 61. The recording studio legend has produced classic albums like Nirvana’s In utero and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and ran the Chicago studio Electrical Audio until the last years of his life. The singer and guitarist has also been an outspoken critic of musicians and others involved in exploitative practices in the industry.

Employees of Albini’s studio, which he founded in 1997, confirmed to several media outlets that a heart attack was responsible for the death of the revered rock musician. He is survived by his wife, filmmaker Heather Whinna.

Albini, who preferred the title “sound engineer” to “producer,” was born in Pasadena, California, in 1962 and later grew up in Missoula, Montana. As a teenager, he played in local punk bands before moving to Chicago to attend Northwestern University in the late ’70s. He earned a degree in journalism and went on to write about Chicago’s emerging punk scene, where he became a fixture in pushing the boundaries of post-punk and alternative rock.

He rose to fame in the early ’80s as the frontman of the Chicago trio he founded, Big Black, which released a series of EPs that showcased the punk band’s simmering, signature guitar sound. The band, consisting of guitarist Santiago Durango and bassist Jeff Pezzati, released their debut album “ Atomizerin 1986, followed by her second project, Songs about f—inga year later, which marked their separation.

“The more time passes, the more correct I think this assessment is,” Albini told the Guardian in 2023. “The band persistently made this vile music and proved that if you have valid working principles, you can do it.” to yours on your own terms and never have to kiss anyone’s ass.”

After Big Black’s split, Albini founded the noise rock band Rapeman. The band only released one album in 1988, Two nuns and a pack mule, before she also broke up. Albini’s musical endeavors then turned to the studio, where he lent his production to the music of other artists such as Robert Plant, The Stooges, Cheap Trick, Chevelle and Superchunk.

In the early ’90s, Albini continued to produce and engineer albums for various artists and increased his profile when he formed the band Shellac in 1992 with drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston. The trio released five albums over the course of their years of activity, their last being titled To all trains, is scheduled to be released on May 17th. The album, which they originally planned to tour with, marks their first studio album release since 2014 Dude, unbelievable.

According to him, Albini worked on over 2,000 albums for mainstream acts and other artists over the course of his life. “If you pace yourself, you don’t have to worry about (burnout),” he said Rolling Stone in 2014.

“I tend not to work at excessive volume so that my ears don’t get physically tired,” he continued. “My attention span might still be exhausted, but there are tricks to maintain that… You need to focus your attention on the smallest details every now and then, but if you spend every second of the session gritting your teeth and heading towards the speakers stare and if you concentrate intently on everything that is happening, you will eventually burn out your attention span and then be unable to do anything at all.