Acclaimed producer behind Nirvana and Pixies dies, at 61

1 week ago 9

By Ben Brasch

May 9, 2024 — 8.25am

Steve Albini, a Chicago-based stone shaper who allied himself with Nirvana and against the corporatised euphony industry, has died.

Albini died of a bosom attack, according to Taylor Hales, the manager astatine Albini’s workplace Electrical Audio Recording. He was 61.

As a producer, Albini got the champion from galore notable alternate stone acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including the Pixies and the Breeders. He besides played successful the bands Shellac and Big Black.

In February 1995, The Washington Post described Albini arsenic a “post-punk barbarian.” By September 2023, The Post called him an “era-defining alt-rock producer.”

He was prolific, telling the Free Press Houston successful 2018 that helium had worked connected a “couple thousand” records.

One of those was successful the precocious 1990s with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, to make their archetypal merchandise of caller worldly since Led Zeppelin broke up successful 1980.

Steve Albini performs with Shellac astatine Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 successful Madrid, past June.

He engineered stone classics - from Nirvana’s In Utero to Mclusky’s Mclusky Do Dallas - but helium besides hated that the euphony manufacture took vantage of artists.

Albini laid it retired successful a December 1993 effort The Problem With Music - a portion successful which helium shirked the rubric of “producer” and mocked euphony producers - penning that bands are held “hostage” by labels.

He began the nonfiction with an image: “I ideate a trench, astir 4 feet wide and 5 feet deep, possibly sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying [excrement]. I ideate these people, immoderate of them bully friends, immoderate of them hardly acquaintances, astatine 1 extremity of this trench. I besides ideate a faceless manufacture lackey astatine the different end, holding a fountain pen and a declaration waiting to beryllium signed.”

In an October 2023 interview connected Conan O’Brien’s podcast to people 3 decades since In Utero, Albini said helium refused to instrumentality a percent of the proceeds from the medium by 1 of the era’s astir fashionable bands.

“The mode that grounds producers and signaling radical are compensated astatine that clip successful peculiar was a instrumentality of accounting that shifted the costs distant from the statement and toward the band, made the set yet liable for immoderate the shaper got paid. And it didn’t travel retired of the wide proceeds of the grounds the mode it would successful an autarkic labels contract, for example. It came specifically retired of the wealth that would different person gone to the band,” helium told O’Brien. “I deliberation that’s ethically untenable.”

He added: “I deliberation little of radical who opt to bash things that way.”

Tributes came successful instantly online, particularly from his beloved Chicago.

Damon Locks, caput of the Chicago-based Black Monument Ensemble - a multigenerational, multimedia euphony corporate aimed astatine honouring the city’s Black euphony - wrote of Albini connected Instagram: “He was a quality (and a punk icon) who did the work, evolved, and was successful work to a larger thought … I respect that helium continued to measure and alteration implicit time. He had an ethos. He stood for something. He was a bully guy. This is truthful shocking.”

The city’s indie euphony venue Metro posted that it had changed its motion retired beforehand to grant Albini. “We’re profoundly saddened to perceive of Steve Albini’s passing and support his household successful our hearts. Thank you for each that you contributed to punk stone successful our municipality and the reverberations of creativity you brought forth, felt the satellite over.”

Albini had different passionateness that led to occurrence extracurricular of music. He was a superior poker player, winning 2 bracelets successful World Series of Poker competitions. He started playing poker successful 1969 erstwhile helium was taught however to play by his great-grandmother, according to his WSOP online profile.

Washington Post