Before I even really knew what a record producer was, Steve Albini was my favorite record producer. As a teenager in the late 90s, seeing his name listed on the back of any record was synonymous with crisp snares, raw guitar, and natural, rehearsal space acoustics. The Breeders, Pixies, Hum, Helmet, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and of course, Nirvana, all these bands were the soundtrack to my upbringing it felt like it was no coincidence Albini produced the records that made me fall in love with them. He didn’t even like the title of producer! Albini insisted on being called the engineer. So I guess he was my favorite engineer too then.
All of this came during a time when I didn’t even know Steve Albini was an icon in his own right before producing my favorite albums!
If it weren’t for reading about the recording sessions of In Utero when I was 12, I never would’ve known about Big Black or Shellac. Like many kids my age, those bands exposed them to the real alternative rarely discussed in the magazines we were reading. Putting together the history through those records made indie rock feel bigger than any music video on MTV’s 120 Minutes ever could. And they did so with all the anti-social vigor, wit, and reckless abandon Steve Albini’s projects will always be known for.
We could list every record Albini engineers or write an in-depth biography from his humble beginnings recording his friend’s projects up to producing with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. There’s the story of his scathing essay in The Baffler that shed a brutal light on the music industry. We could talk about his out-of-left-field turn as a professional poker player. Or how his work with modern artists like Sunn O))), KEN Mode, Code Orange, METZ, Cloud Nothings, Local H, Joanna Newsome, and Ty Segall are every bit as masterful as the aforementioned In Utero.
But all of that would be redundant, over-cooked and over-produced. All things no one could ever say about any record Steve Albini touched.
As we mourn the loss of an icon, it’s probably most fitting to just sit back and listen to the music Steve Albini was a part of.
When Jon and I started the Crushed Monocle Podcast, our mission statement was to invite guests who reflected our taste in music and movies. Admittedly, when you only have a few episodes under your belt and you haven’t found your footing as to what your podcast even is, it’s not that easy to book the kind of guests you hope to. But after being fortunate enough to land Failure’s Kellii Scott then Studio 666 director BJ McDonnell, we had the crazy idea to reach out to Steve Albini.
I went through the process of tracking him down, sent him the pitch, and waited. Deep down I hoped he wouldn’t respond if it meant he was going to tear into me with his edge-lord demeanor for even asking. But in less than an hour I received an email simply saying “Sure. Let me know when you want to do it.”. Just like that! Here we were, only 8 episodes into this podcast, and Jon and I just booked the man who produced our all-time favorite records!
Casual, well-spoken, and eager to answer anything and everything we threw at him, Albini was a fantastic guest.
Of course, we talked about making records, but he also gave us a glimpse of what it was like to experience the world shutting down due to COVID from an artist’s perspective. We also got his hilarious opinions on heavy metal and even had him laughing at the absurdity of asking for his thoughts on the infamous 1995 film Showgirls. We clearly had no business landing a guest like Steve Albini on a show talking about this sort of stuff, but it was fun, wholesome, and will go down as one of my favorite memories of writing for BeardedGentlemenMusic. – Coop
Albini will be best known as an audio engineer (or producer, but he hated that), and if anything, that goes to show the vastness of his humility as an artist. For as brash a personality as he was, he never forced his artistic ethos on any bands. He never tried to upstage them, even when he was the bigger name in the credits. And his own bands never got the shine they deserved.
Shellac in particular was a monumental noise rock band (with a new album coming out May 17, no less) that could have been a giant in the punk scene.
Skeletal arrangements, oppressive bass, pounding, raw drums, and ugly guitars were a playground for Albini’s trademark production that makes you feel almost like you’re in the room with the goddamn band, having your brains get pounded to dust. And the lyrics ranged from clever to ridiculous while experimental riffs and structures came at you in wave after wave.
When I listen to this band, it makes me wish Albini had pushed his beliefs a little more on other bands. It makes me wish he wanted bands to be a little more like his band — at least within the structures of their songs and band dynamics. But that wasn’t him. None of that was him. So Shellac existed as this side thing to his life as an audio engineer, a perfect example of who he was artistically. – Kendon
I always find it weird and difficult when someone who I admire and who has influenced me so much musically passes away. Maybe, it’s weird and difficult because like most people I was tasked with dealing with this type of thing at a young age when Kurt Cobain passed away and I didn’t know how to. It’s like I had this loved one that I’d never actually met and didn’t actually know just disappear. This person was just gone and that’s it. Maybe it’s cliche to bring up Kurt Cobain when writing about the passing of Steve Albini, but if most of us are being honest In Utero was likely the first album that many of us heard that Steve engineered (produced) and for me once I heard the sounds on that album everything changed.
Being fairly new in my musical journey I was just getting into ‘rock’ music around the time In Utero came out. Up until that point what I had heard was mostly just polished sounds whether it be the pop music I listened to as a young child or the fairly polished sounds coming from bands in the late 80s and early 90s. But, In Utero was different. To my young inexperienced ears, this album sounded like chaos, it sounded broken, it sounded real… it sounded like perfection! The crunch of the guitars, the raw vocals, the heavy bass, and most importantly the insane-menacing-bombastic sound of the drums was an absolute game changer for me.
I had to have more of this sound and surprisingly it wasn’t very difficult to find as I was already getting into some of the other bands Steve engineered for (Pixies, Breeders, Helmet, Fugazi, Jesu Lizard, etc.), but I didn’t know it was Steve’s magic yet. I just wanted that sound. It wasn’t until later in life the connection was made that he was generally responsible for this sound and the albums that sounded the coolest. Like Kendon mentioned above he could have been a bigger name, he could have upstaged the bands he worked with, but instead, he just did his absolute best to make them sound as real and as genuine as they possibly could. Just like how he was.
In the past couple days since Steve’s passing, I’ve watched so many loved bands/musicians post about their interactions with him whether working with him on recordings, playing a show with one of his bands, or just having general interactions with him out in the real world. It makes me love these bands/musicians and Steve more. However, there is one type of post that has come through that has stuck out the most and it’s the posts about how some of these bands/musicians never knew Steve, how much his music and recordings meant to them, and how they wished they could have worked with him, toured with him, etc. These types of posts are the ones that have struck a chord with me because I was lucky enough to have had an interaction with Steve when he agreed to guest on the podcast Coop mentioned earlier.
I had no business getting to be able to interact with Steve Albini, I’m not in a real-life touring band, I didn’t found some kick-ass indie label, and I’m not some influential figure in the history of music.
I’m (along with Coop) just a random fuckin music nerd with a niche podcast that no one has heard about and for some reason, Steve agreed to come on. I’ll never know why. I’d like to think that maybe he was aware of B.G.M. and how we’ve been an independent music site for over a decade, but I highly doubt it. He probably just agreed to come on because he was a real genuine person and figured if someone cared enough to put the effort into talking with him that was a good enough reason to do it.
To bring this all around when I found out about Steve’s passing yesterday it felt especially weird and difficult. This was someone who I admired, who influenced me, and someone who I actually interacted with. I know he and I weren’t friends, but it feels like a friend died that’s why I’ve referred to him by his first name throughout this. That’s how much Steve’s time and our conversation meant to me on top of all the music he took part in. But his death doesn’t feel like a disappearance like all the other times when an admired musical figure passes away. Instead, I feel lucky for our interaction and grateful for the vast amount of music he had his hand in, both in the music I love and cherish and all the other music he touched that I still haven’t explored yet.
The albums that Steve worked on have that little extra something, it’s like a raw emotion.
As I’m typing this incredibly long-winded self-indulgent tribute I’m listening to one of his albums that he engineered (if you listen to the podcast you can probably guess which one) and tearing up a little. His sound just makes you feel something.
Anyway, R.I.P. Steve Albini. Thanks for everything, you will be missed. – Jon