Music legend Steve Albini, pictured at his studio in Chicago in 2014, has passed away. Photo / Getty Images
Music legend Steve Albini, pictured at his studio in Chicago in 2014, has passed away. Photo / Getty Images
Family, friends and peers are mourning the loss of the indie maestro after a fatal heart attack.
Steve Albini, an alternative rock pioneer and legendary producer who shaped the musical landscape through his work with Nirvana, the Pixies, PJ Harvey and more has died. He was 61.
Brian Fox, an engineer at Albini’s studio, Electrical Audio Recording, today said Albini died after a heart attack yesterday.
In addition to his work on canonised rock albums such as Nirvana‘s In Utero, the Pixies’ breakthrough Surfer Rosa and PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Albini was the frontman of underground bands Big Black and Shellac.
He dismissed the term “producer,” refused to take royalties from the albums he worked on, and requested he be credited with “Recorded by Steve Albini”, a fabled phrase on albums he worked on.
At the time of his death, Albini’s band Shellac were preparing to tour their first new album in a decade, To All Trains, which will be released next week.
Ugh man, a heartbreaking loss of a legend. Love to his family and innumerable colleagues. Farewell, Steve Albini. pic.twitter.com/xVY27cmdbU
Other acts whose music was shaped by Albini include Joanna Newsom’s indie-folk opus Ys and releases from bands like the Breeders, The Jesus Lizard, Hum, Superchunk, Low and Mogwai.
Albini was born in California, grew up in Montana and fell in love with the do-it-yourself punk music scene in Chicago while studying journalism at Northwestern University.
As a teenager he played in punk bands, and in college he wrote about music for the prescient indie zine Forced Exposure. While attending Northwestern in the early ‘80s, he founded the abrasive, noisy post-punk band Big Black, known for its mordant riffs, violent and taboo lyrics and drum machine in lieu of a live drummer. It was a controversial innovation at the time, from a man whose career would be defined by risky choices. The band’s best-known song, the ugly, explosive, six-minute Kerosene from their cult favourite 1986 album Atomizer is ideal evidence — and not for the faint of heart.
Musician and producer Steve Albini in the "A" control room of his Chicago studio Electrical Audio in 2005. Photo / Getty Images
Then came the short-lived band Rapeman — one of two groups Albini fronted with indefensibly offensive names and vulgar song titles. In the early ‘90s he formed Shellac, the ferocious, distorted noise-rock band — an evolution from Big Black, but still punctuated by pummelling guitar tones and aggressive vocals.
In 1997 Albini opened his famed studio Electrical Audio in Chicago.
“The recording part is the part that matters to me — that I’m making a document that records a piece of our culture, the life’s work of the musicians that are hiring me,” Albini told the Guardian last year, when asked about some of the well-known and much-loved albums he’s recorded. “I take that part very seriously. I want the music to outlive all of us.”
Albini was a larger-than-life character in the independent rock music scene, known for his forward-thinking productions, unapologetic irreverence, acerbic sense of humour and criticisms of the music industry’s exploitative practices — as detailed in his landmark 1993 essay The Problem with Music — as much as his talents.
Later in life, he became a notable poker player and apologetic for his past indiscretions.
“Ugh man, a heartbreaking loss of a legend. Love to his family and innumerable colleagues,” wrote actor Elijah Woodon X. “Farewell, Steve Albini.”
