Steve Albini, Underground Rock Legend, Dead at 61

Steve Albini, a towering determine of underground rock who recorded a few of the style’s largest albums and fronted the band Big Black, is useless at 61. Albini had a coronary heart assault, workers at his recording studio confirmed to Pitchfork on May 8. His demise comes simply as his band, Shellac, was getting ready to launch their first album in a decade, To All Trains, on May 17. Albini kick-started his profession fronting the Illinois post-punk band Big Black, which he fashioned at Northwestern University. The band turned influential within the burgeoning rock underground of the Nineteen Eighties, particularly for Albini’s use of a drum machine of their music, a precursor to industrial rock. They launched two albums, 1986’s Atomizer and 1987’s Songs About Fucking, earlier than disbanding in 1987. Albini then fashioned the short-lived band Rapeman afterward (a reputation he since said he regrets). In 1992, he fashioned the trio Shellac, which steadily launched albums through the ’90s. Shellac final launched the album Dude Incredible in 2014. The group recorded the upcoming To All Trains sporadically from 2017 to 2022.

Albini is even higher identified for his work within the studio, the place he was various rock’s most influential producer and engineer. (A critic of music-industry energy buildings, Albini notoriously disliked the time period “producer” and shunned credit score on albums he labored on, even forgoing royalties.) Albini recorded a few of the albums that solidified various rock within the Nineteen Eighties 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 a number of albums by the Jesus Lizard. In later years, he recorded albums for Joanna Newsom, Ty Segall, Cloud Nothings, Sun O))), Laura Jane Grace, and Code Orange. Albini opened the Chicago studio Electrical Audio in 1995, the place he recorded till his demise. In his free time, he was a profitable poker participant, winning two World Series of Poker bracelets.