Steve Albini, the legendary record producer and engineer behind Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, and countless other classic alternative rock albums, has died of a heart attack. He was 61 years old.
News of Albini’s death was confirmed to Consequence via a staff member at his recording studio, Electric Audio in Chicago.
Albini was born in Pasadena, California, on July 22nd in 1962. He went to college at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and spent most of his career based in Chicago, where he founded his recording studio Electric Audio.
His music career essentially started as singer-guitarist of Big Black, a band he formed while still a student at Northwestern. Big Black released two studio albums during their existence from 1981 through 1987, including the highly influential 1987 LP Songs About Fucking.
As a producer, Albini made a name for himself helming Pixies’ 1988 debut full-length, Surfer Rosa, and The Breeders’ 1990 debut, POD. Kurt Cobain was so impressed with Albini’s work on both of those albums that he enlisted him to produce Nirvana’s 1993 LP, In Utero. That year, he also produced PJ Harvey’s classic album Rid of Me.
Overall, as a producer and engineer, Albini worked on thousands of albums during his career, including releases by Melt Banana, The Jesus Lizard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Gogol Bordello, and more. He even engineered the Jimmy Page and Robert Plant album Walking Into Clarksdale.
Albini was known for getting the raw sound out of an artist, and not adding too many bells and whistles to his productions. His approach led to a rift with Nirvana’s label, Geffen, who wanted a more polished sound on In Utero. Eventually, “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” were remixed but the rest of the album remained intact.
“The three members of Nirvana I have absolutely no gripe with whatsoever,” Albini told The Guardian in an interview last year. “Every other person they worked with was a manipulative piece of shit who was putting pressure on them, scapegoating me and shit-talking this great record they made.”
After the demise of Big Black, Albini formed the post-hardcore band Rapeman, who lasted a few years and released one album, 1988’s Two Nuns and a Pack Mule.
In 1992, Albini launched his long-running noise-rock band Shellac, who were still active until his passing. In fact, the band’s latest album and sixth overall, To All Trains, is set for release on May 17th. Just yesterday (May 7th), it was announced that Shellac would open for hardcore supergroup OFF!’s farewell show in Chicago on July 18th.
This is a developing story…