Steve Albini, the record producer and engineer behind generation-defining rock albums by Nirvana, the Pixies, and PJ Harvey, died Tuesday. He was 61.
A representative for Electrical Audio, Albini’s Chicago recording studio, confirmed Albini’s death following a heart attack on Tuesday.
The life of Albini
Albini was a giant of punk and experimental rock music from the ‘80s to the present day. He produced (or, as he preferred to call his job, “engineered”) Nirvana’s final studio album, In Utero, selected by the band for his raw, uncompromising aesthetic.
Albums like the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me felt bracing and dangerous then. They continue to inspire young rockers today for their seething energy and defiance of pop audio convention.
“I’ve gotten exactly one phone call out of a No. 1 record,” Albini told The Times in 1993. “It shows how pack-like these major-label people are. They all think the same thing: ‘That Albini guy is trouble. Stay away.’”
Snarling and sneering through big horn-rim glasses, yet just as ambitious and incorruptible as he was abrasive, Albini became a star in the underground.
“How many boys want to be whipped by Steve Albini’s guitar?” Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon told the Village Voice in 1988.
“Big Black introduced one of the indie world’s foremost characters,” wrote Michael Azerrad in the definitive indie-punk scene biography, Our Band Could Be Your Life.
“A person who would define not just the sound of underground music through the next two decades, but also its discourse – the irascible, outspoken, intelligent and relentlessly ethical Steve Albini.”
In Utero, Nirvana’s follow-up to the epochal Nevermind bridged the gap between the underground music Kurt Cobain loved and the expectations placed on the biggest band in the world.
“Feeling uncomfortable with this new world of Nirvana fame,” drummer Dave Grohl said in an interview last year. “When things did become huge, we all sort of clung to the things we felt most attached to. We had always listened to records Steve had made.”
Albini’s catalog spans decades of fierce and fearless rock and experimental records, from Slint and Jesus Lizard to Low, Mogwai, and Joanna Newsom.
“What matters to me is that I do things in a way that I feel is – for lack of a better word – righteous,” Albini told The Times. “Everything that I do, I do basically with the same goal: I want to make better, cheaper punk-rock records today than I did yesterday.”
(Los Angeles Times/TNS)