Steve Albini, the report producer and engineer behind technology- establishing rock tracks by Nirvana, the Pixies and PJ Harvey, died Tuesday. He was 61.
A rep for Electrical Audio, Albini’s Chicago recording studio, confirmed Albini’s death following a soul assault on Tuesday. A statement from the representative and a list of survivors were not accessible to the consultant.
From the 1980s to the present moment, Albini was a king of rock and empirical stone. 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. Earlier records like” Rid of Me” and” Surf Rosa” by the Pixies and” Rid of Me” were feared and dangerous, and they still inspire young rockers today because of their eruptive power and defiance of pop music protocol.
” I’ve only received one phone call from a No. 1 record”, Albini , told The Times in 1993.  ,” It shows how group- like these main- label individuals are. They all think the same thing: ‘ That Albini man is problem. Stay apart.'”
Albini, raised in Missoula, Montana, was the brother of a rocket scientist papa and inherited his architect’s erudition. The younger Albini discovered grunge through music magazines and safe haven for misfits because they were clever and disillusioned with the neighborhood’s traditional culture. He rose to fame as an actor in the malodorous rings Big Black and Shellac, which emerged from the rich post-hardcore basement alongside songs like Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and the Minutemen, after relocating to Chicago to study journalism at Northwestern University.
Snarling and sneering through great horn- disc glasses, yet just as optimistic and uncorruptable as he was confrontational, Albini became a legend in the underwater. ” How many kids want to be whipped by Steve Albini’s harp”? Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth addressed the 1988 Village Voice.
” Big Black introduced one of the independent country’s all characters”, wrote Michael Azerrad in the clear indie- punk scene biography,” Our Peak Had Become Your Life”. ” A person who would determine not just the tone of underground songs through the next two years, but also its conversation — the irascible, outspoken, intelligent and persistently ethical Steve Albini”.
Numerous punk, metal, electrical, and noise bands were influenced by Shellac in particular. The team’s 1994 LP” At Action Park” was a terrible study on article- punk, its minimalist still seething power- trio instrumentation scampering with menace.
Albini’s work ethic as a producer at his studio, Electrical Audio, combined with his commitment to producing the worst, most brutal sounds possible. He was well-known for wearing a mechanic-style jumpsuit during meetings, an overt expression of his perception of the role.
” I’ve always had a fairly standard method”, he said of his recording techniques. ” I have a straightforward, documentary approach to recording music, and I’ve never been tempted with my own bands or with anyone else’s band to suddenly go production- happy. The record will either fall apart or stay strong if the band manages to sound natural. … The things I like most about rock bands are simplicity and straightforwardness, and those principles guide my recordings”.”
He was a ferocious advocate for artists. A famous essay in the Baffler,  ” ,The Problem With Music,”  , laid out the perfidies of the major- label system, at the time still in a post- Nirvana feeding frenzy for young rock acts.
When I talk to a band that is about to sign with a major label, I always come to mind them in a particular context,” Albini wrote.” I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying s—. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. A faceless industry lackey can be seen at the other end, waiting to sign a contract and fountain pen.
” In Utero,” Nirvana’s follow- up to the the epochal” Nevermind, “bridged the gap between the underground music Kurt Cobain loved and the expectations placed on the biggest band in the world”. According to drummer Dave Grohl in an interview last year,” I feel uneasy with this new world of Nirvana fame.” We all kind of clung to the things that made us feel the most attached to things when things did grow. We had always listened to the records Steve had produced.
From Slint and Jesus Lizard to Low, Mogwai, and Joanna Newsom, Albini’s catalog includes decades of fierce and fearless rock and experimental records. He kept a journal of his death until he passed away. Shellac was about to tour around its first album in a decade”, To All Trains,” which will be released next week.
According to Albini,” What matters to me is that I act in a way that, for lack of a better word, feels righteous.” 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.”
___
© 2024 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by , Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
