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, Electrical Audio in Chicago.
Preferring the term “engineer” over “producer,” Albini was lauded for his minimalist approach to recording sessions and focus on capturing the natural sound of musicians’ performances. As a singer and guitarist in his own right, Albini also led the bands Shellac and Big Black.
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 Electrical 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, namely the highly influential LPs Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987).
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 albums that he enlisted him to produce Nirvana’s 1993 LP, In Utero. That year, Albini also helmed PJ Harvey’s classic album Rid of Me.
Albini famously refused to take royalties from artists with whom he worked and preferred not to be listed in album credits. This philosophy toward recording was best outlined in a letter he sent to Nirvana as his conditions for working on In Utero together.
“I explained this to Kurt but I thought I’d better reiterate it here. I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record,” he wrote. “No points. Period. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It’s the band’s fans who buy the records.”
In the letter, Albini agreed with the band’s suggested approach to recording the album, saying they should complete it in a couple days with “high quality but minimal ‘production’ and no interference from front office bulletheads.”
He also wrote that he did not consider it his place to tell Nirvana “what to do or how to play,” but rather “leave room for accidents and chaos.” Albini continued by explaining a recording made with “click tracks, computers, samplers, and sequencers” would “bear very little relationship to the live band, which is what all this hooey is supposed to be about.”
It was this philosophy that led to a rift with Nirvana’s label, Geffen, who wanted a more polished sound for In Utero. Eventually, “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” were remixed, though the rest of the original mixes remained intact. The record as a whole, however, was remastered in a way that aimed to “change the overall sound of the album,” Albini’s studio maintenance technician and future Shellac bandmate Bob Weston argued. Despite Albini’s dissatisfaction with the mastering of In Utero, he maintained positive relationships with the band members.
“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.”
Overall, as a producer and engineer, Albini worked on thousands of records 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.
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.
Outside of music, Albini was an avid poker player, winning gold bracelets at the World Series of Poker in 2018 and 2022.
Albini is survived by his wife, film director Heather Whinna.
Steve Albini explained why he refused to take royalty points for Nirvana's In Utero: "It [was] ethically untenable"pic.twitter.com/Np9j214t4z
— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) May 8, 2024
