Steve Albini, Underground Rock Legend, Dead at 61

Steve Albini, a towering determine of underground rock who recorded some of the genre’s most important albums and fronted the band Huge Black, is useless at 61. Albini experienced a coronary heart attack, staff members at his recording studio confirmed to Pitchfork on May well 8. His demise arrives just as his band, Shellac, was planning to release their to start with album in a ten years, To All Trains, on Might 17. Albini kick-began his profession fronting the Illinois put up-punk band Huge Black, which he shaped at Northwestern University. The band turned influential in the burgeoning rock underground of the 1980s, in particular for Albini’s use of a drum device in their music, a precursor to industrial rock. They unveiled two albums, 1986’s Atomizer and 1987’s Songs About Fucking, before disbanding in 1987. Albini then fashioned the short-lived band Rapeman afterward (a identify he considering that reported he regrets). In 1992, he fashioned the trio Shellac, which steadily launched albums during the ’90s. Shellac last unveiled the album Dude Extraordinary in 2014. The team recorded the approaching To All Trains sporadically from 2017 to 2022.

Albini is even superior regarded for his operate in the studio, exactly where he was substitute rock’s most influential producer and engineer. (A critic of songs-marketplace ability structures, Albini notoriously disliked the expression “producer” and shunned credit history on albums he labored on, even forgoing royalties.) Albini recorded some of the albums that solidified option rock in the 1980s and ’90s: Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, the Breeders’ Pod, Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Superchunk’s No Pocky for Kitty, and numerous albums by the Jesus Lizard. In afterwards a long time, he recorded albums for Joanna Newsom, Ty Segall, Cloud Nothings, Sunlight O))), Laura Jane Grace, and Code Orange. Albini opened the Chicago studio Electrical Audio in 1995, the place he recorded until finally his death. In his absolutely free time, he was a profitable poker participant, profitable two Environment Series of Poker bracelets.