One would of course like to start an obituary for this musician and producer with his own bands, with bands like Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac, with their music and their rawness, even brutality, with their hardness and dynamism, which is incomparable for rock and indie rock standards and ultimately: freshness.
But Steve Albini made a big name for himself primarily as a producer and made his name in pop history. He was responsible for the Pixies’ debut album, “Surfer Rosa”, released in 1988. On this one, despite all the directness and sparseness of the sound he preferred, he still left so many rough edges that others could sand them away for the “Surfer-Rosa” successor “Doolittle” to make it suitable for a world career.
His first band was called Big Black
In the case of Nirvana, it was the other way around: When Kurt Cobain and his followers no longer knew how to deal with their “Nevermind” superstardom and wanted to return to their rugged, wild roots, they hired Steve Albini for their last regular studio album before Cobain’s suicide . And he produced “In Utero” in such a way that many Nirvana fans believed that their favorites had nothing else in mind than pure self-destruction.
Albini was born in Pasadena, California, in 1962, grew up in Montana, discovered punk here and then moved to Chicago to become a journalist. At the beginning of the eighties he founded his first band, Big Black. With this he turned away from punk in a nuanced way, created his own, more complex form of postpunk and hardcore and released two groundbreaking albums with “Atomizer” and “Songs About Fucking”. But even at this time, Albini was increasingly moving behind the mixing desks to produce other people’s music and to get the best, ideal typical things out of the respective bands.
The list of albums for which Steve Albini is responsible reads like a who’s who of rock and indie rock from the eighties and nineties. Also there: the Breeders, Wedding Present, Bush, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or the Berlin 18th Dye, of course relatives like Jesus Lizard, Helmet (whose iconic album “Meantime”!) or McLusky, but also Jimmy Page and Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin (their album “Walking Into Clarksdale”). And later various acts like Joanna Newsom, Sunn O))) and Iggy Pop.
Famous poker player
Albini often avoided interfering too much with the bands’ sounds. He tried to preserve their live dynamic in the studio and preferred to think of himself as a sound engineer rather than a producer. As far as the music industry is concerned, like Ian McKaye from Fugazi or Henry Rollins, he was one of its harshest critics, in pre-digital times, especially in digital ones. Consequently, he only ever took a fee for his production work and did not participate in record sales. What he barely earned as a musician and with his studio in Chicago, he made back in his secondary life as a professional poker player. Successful: He is said to have earned almost $400,000 in his second career.
Minimalist, hermetic
The band Shellac, which he founded in 1992 before working on “In Utero”, would become his longest-lasting project. In addition to the aforementioned Helmet, Shellac played perhaps the most minimalist, hermetic, brittle noise rock of all time. Post-rock almost without rock, if you will.
After Shellac’s fifth and last album “Dude Incredible” was released in 2014 and Albini had to make do with typically broken collaborations with old buddies like Zeni Geva, for example “Maximum Implosion”, a new album from Shellac was supposed to be released next week. Tragically, he will not live to see its publication. Steve Albini died of a heart attack at his home in Chicago on Wednesday. He was only 61 years old.