Hard to overstate Albini's influence, both as a musician and producer. Big Black? No one was doing stuff like that in the mid-80s. His production on PJ Harvey's Rid of Me took her compositions to a new level. He also produced a lot of very fine albums in the 80s and 90s by the Pixies (Surfer Rosa), Nirvana (In Utero) and various albums by The Jesus Lizard, Superchunk, and others.
Yes, he was cantankerous. Marched to the beat of his own drum, and didn't give a FF about what other people thought. Loved this quote from Tape Op:
"It seemed like most of the music I liked was coming from San Francisco. I don't remember one fucking thing coming out of L.A. that I cared about. And skateboarding. What did that have to do with punk music? What's next, yo-yo tricks?"
Had a yo-yo buff a couple of years ago showing me youtube videos, and he literally said "the yo-yo scene takes it's fashion cues from skateboard culture", so full circle?
The sound and production quality of that specific record was really my golden mean for what an alternative rock record should sound like. I especially loved the way he would record the drums, with that open, uncompressed sound. If you listen to most records that came out in the 1980's the drums sound really dated and super-compressed.
I didn’t start listening to PJ Harvey until later in her career, but Rid of Me is one of my favorite albums. It had a sort of harshness that put me off at first, but once I got past that it really grew on me, and now that perceived harshness is an inseparable part of the final product for me. I don’t know how much of that to attribute to Albini or what the album might have been with a different producer, but what it did become still stands out strongly in my musical experience.
I love the sound of Rid of Me, with one major exception: the radical volume changes on the title track and Highway 61. I 100% don’t understand what was going on there; it makes it impossible to listen to without riding the volume control and it bears no resemblance to how it was performed live.
A Mogwai album did this to me once, while I was wearing headphones. I’ve never bothered to work through the process where I’d know when and where this would happen so I can listen to them again. I just dropped them.
Despite my phenomenal experience hearing them live in Cambridge MA in the 90s. Loudest band I’ve ever suffered through. But that was live.
Search music producer forums and you will the see the same totally opposing viewpoints as for Napoleon Dynamite. They love it or hate it.
Rid of Me is extremely devisive. Excellent record, and extremely influential. Just think of Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days take on it.
But Albini's laissez-faire (non-)production??
I heard about him on the Foo Fighters HBO docu-series that came out in I think 2015? The one thing that stuck out to me was that he considered what he did a trade in the sense that artists paid for his time and he did not get royalties.
Oh man, that’s terrible! I was waiting to hear when the next Shellac tour was going to be taking place, as they’ve got an album coming out next week.
I’m a huge, huge fan of Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac, and Steve Albini’s production (Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Jesus Lizard’s discography, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Brainiac’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, Songs:Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Company, plus hundreds more)
He could be a bit of a dick but he was an insanely talented musician and engineer/producer. I don’t think any single person has had as much of effect on the music I listen to as Steve did.
RIP Steve Albini, your impact on indie music will not be forgotten, and neither will your belt guitar strap. You will be dearly missed, there’s very few people cut from the same cloth you were.
Didn't know Shellac had a new album coming out; they release stuff so infrequently I don't really keep up. Going to have some mixed feelings listening to that one...
His very close-miked sound still containing a tasteful (i.e. light) amount of reverb is such a recognizable signature...
A true legend, and big coincidence since I discovered yet another of his production a week ago: Zeni Geva's last three LPs. Almost as important as the ubiquitous Dan Swano in my collection:
$ find -L ~/Music -type f -name album.json -exec jqmusic '.credits | has("Steve Albini")' {} \; -print | awk -F/ '{print $5 " - " $6}'
Big Black - (1986) Atomizer
Big Black - (1982) Lungs
Big Black - (1983) Bulldozer
Big Black - (1987-1) Headache
Big Black - (1987-2) Songs About Fucking
Nine Inch Nails - (1999) The Fragile
Om - (2007) Pilgrimage
The Breeders - (1990) Pod
Nirvana - (1993) In Utero
The Jesus Lizard - (1990) Head
The Jesus Lizard - (1989) Pure
The Jesus Lizard - (1991) Goat
The Jesus Lizard - (1992) Liar
The Jesus Lizard - (1994) Down
Pixies - (1988) Surfer Rosa
PJ Harvey - (1993) Rid of Me
Shellac - (1994) At Action Park
Rapeman - (1988) Two Nuns and a Pack Mule
Zeni Geva - (1993) Desire For Agony
Zeni Geva - (1995) Freedom Bondage
Zeni Geva - (2001) 10,000 Light Years
To actually hear "In Utero" in all its Albini-esque glory, you must find the 2013 20th Anniversary Edition, it's on the 2nd disc.
Zeni Geva is such a great band! Maybe you have already seen it, but I've always loved this live cover of 'Model' Kraftwerk by Zeni Geva & Albini - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8R7c7XYmI4.
I'm going to put this here - The Crooked Fiddle Band - a Sydney folk band with major inspiration from Big Black and others had two albums produced by Albini - I couldn't think of a better match:
Zeni Geva deserves more credit, great to see them mentioned. You probably know Neurosis and Melt Banana but those might also be up your alley.
Other noteworthy Albini-engineered bands for me: Oxbow, Low, Whitehouse, Labradford, Burning Witch, Godspeed's U.X.O album. Peter Sotos' Buyer's Market is one of the most insane albums I've ever had the displeasure to listen to, and Albini apparently produced it, although I don't hear any obvious influence.
The Albini-produced Whitehouse albums seem to be underloved because they're a weird transitional period between the group's more famous "wasps fighting" and "broken African robot" sounds, but they're some of the best releases. There's a decadent and sinister competence to them that can't be heard in the earlier buzzier material.
I can't think of another single person more influential and important to my own musical journey than Steve Albini. Guys like him are supposed to live to a ripe old age telling stories. It's just a horrible loss.
Steve Albini has produced two of my favorite records, Surfa Rosa by The Pixies, and Pod by The Breeders. I also quite enjoy Rich Man's 8 Track which is a collection of some of the best Big Black songs. Albini's band Big Black is not for everyone, but if you're a fan of angry punk catharsis you owe it to yourself to check them out.
I feel very sad! Everything I loved about music had always ties with him, his style and his type of production. I was so excited about the upcoming Shellac album and tour. This hits so heavy... :(
His recounting of the recording of “In Utero” on Conan O’Brien’s podcast (along with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic) is a fantastic hour of storytelling and rock history. Can’t recommend it enough.
"I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There's no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn't be able to sleep."
It's fascinating how in certain genres producers have elevated themselves, rightly in my opinion, to positions that are almost equal to the artists they're recording. In pop and hip-hop, people really care about who produced what, often because the producer has an enormous role in the overall sound of the music. Those producers would probably disagree with Albini right away. It's less a thing when you're dealing with a band or people who play an instrument, but I can also think of some metal producers who have very distinct sounds and who usually leave an "imprint" on the recording (Colin Marston and Kurt Ballou for examples). Albini, though, seemed to really believe that his role was to just be a kind of neutral technician, manning the switches and ensuring the band and their music gets on the record through a series of indifferent tubes with no other input.
Outside of his position on royalties, he was one of the best and harshest critics of the music industry:
He actually came around later in life on being the harshest critic and also addressed the "producer role" in this[0] article:
"As he kept working, making hundreds of records across many more sessions, Albini became more comfortable stepping aside. Experiences like the Plant and Page record reminded him he was just a cog, there to enable someone else’s expression. These days, once Albini has agreed to record an artist, he begins by asking them to state their expectations, what bands they’re into, how they’d like to sound, how they’ve been disappointed in previous sessions. (The process is not unlike starting with a new therapist.)"
steve certainly didn't hold back his contempt for the concept of a "producer", but I don't read him as disagreeing they have significant influence over the finished product. if anything, that's the core of his objection: someone other than "the artist" diluting the work, and hence why he asked to be credited as "recording engineer", if at all. the irony is that, despite his insistent denial, everyone else seems to think there is a signature "albini sound".
what has changed since he wrote that piece is that the concept of "the artist" has been heavily blurred by mainstream music that predominantly features synthesized instruments. if I'm singing words written by one person to a melody written by second over a track composed of thousands of different samples sent through various filters by a third, who is "the artist"?
I'm trying to reconcile that 'plumber' against George Martin with the Beatles. He was paid like a plumber for the first couple years, and... EMI treated him with such disdain that he ended up leaving. I'm sure the money was much better after he left, but... had EMI just been slightly nicer to him, they'd have owned him for many more years.
That said, I think his relationship with his bands opened up areas for him to contribute to the core product more than Albini perhaps did (Martin played piano on some tracks, scored out any classical parts for other musicians, etc).
Martin may have been the middle ground between the 'producer-as-top-billing' and 'paid like a plumber' spectrum Albini seems to identify.
Martin was so involved in the creative process he was closer to a 5th bandmember, and was sometimes called such by the Beatles. He had more involvement in the creative product than most producers, including writing and arranging the strings, brass, and winds parts that are all over later Beatles records, and appeared as an instrumental performer on over 25 Beatles tracks.
So much that EMI have been fixing his work for 60 years now, in particular his decision to split the Beatles tracks arbitrarily between the two speakers for all the stereo mixes, despite the Beatles personal involvement in the mixing process for the mono mix downs which sound infinitely better.
i was once in a debate about capitalism and labor, and this letter was cited. this letter doesn't show the nuance of how he ran his business. here's an article with more insight about his ethos: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brick-by-brick/20150...
> “Think about it this way: My business is a business of the first type, where everyone involved feels like they’re working on a common project. Everyone involved feels like we are equally valuable. When our clients come in, and they don’t see that there’s a power structure or a hierarchy; nobody has the big office or anything. Everybody is working together as comrades on this project.”
> “The remuneration is very equitable. Everybody gets paid the same. I make the same amount of money in a month as the newest employee that we have. So there is a fundamental difference between that and virtually any corporate structure. But you can’t expect people who feel like they are less valuable to a corporation, who feel like their effort, their input, and their opinion means less than someone else in that corporation. You can’t expect those people to jump in and all be pulling for the same results, team players. Because you have defined for them that they are not all pulling for one thing, that they are not team players. You have defined their role for them as subordinate.”
RIP. I just bought Shellac's debut album recently, and they have another set to release soon.
I recommend the Kreative Kontrol podcast episode with him and Fred Armisen from last year where they talk about their experiences in the Chicago music scene.
Whether he considered himself one or not, Steve Albini will always stand out to me as the epitome of the Punk value system. Here are two of my absolute favorites:
This is hugely surprising. 61 is not old man. Is it me or does seem like the Gen Xers in the so-called counter culture are less long lived than their Boomer counterparts?
because of his sort of ascetic impulses in other domains one doesn’t imagine him as particularly hard-living, but this 2002 ilxor thread (bumped for his death) suggests that he had his first heart attack way back: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?bo...
edit: viral pericarditis, actually, before it was a hot topic
That some boomers like Ozzy Osbourne are still alive is just a freak accident. There have been plenty of baby boomer people who died comparatively young.
Longevity is part genetics, part lifestyle, and part just dumb luck. Unfortunately Steve just got a bit unlucky, or bad genetics, or both. Or maybe in spite of his alcohol- and drug-free lifestyle he just had a really bad diet.
I was talking about this with my g/f when watching Clerks 3.
It seems that no other generation seems to be facing their mortality much sooner than Gen Xers.
Clerks 3 is a movie about two old Gen Xers coping with getting old, having heart attacks, coping with grief, struggling with loneliness, while the world passes them by.
I'll second what everyone else said and add that the guy was absolutely amazing at capturing drums. Everything I ever read about the guy sounded positive to me even though the authors might not have agreed
Time to spend an afternoon blasting Wedding Present's "Seamonsters", among other masterpieces he had his fingers on (esp Surfer Rosa as other people mention)
My one story: A band I was in at the time recorded drums at Electrical Audio in 2010 (I think) and I was the drummer. Albini was not involved in the project and though he was around, we didn't see him much. I would wear this really bad t-shirt with the sleeves cut off to keep cool while playing. As Albini passed by me one time, he looked at me and _very_ sarcastically said, "Don't worry, you look great" and kept walking. That was our only interaction.
One of the most fascinating men that worked in music production/recording. If you aren't familiar with him and his various idiosyncrasies, I highly recommend giving this a watch/listen:
In my personal list of top 10 albums of all time, Albini recorded six of them. I say "recorded" instead of "produced" because this is more akin to his style: set up microphones and record the band as they sound.
He famously would hit record and then just play games on his phone until the track was done and ask if they wanted to go again. Of course he did this because he felt after getting things setup and sounding as desired (which he put a lot of work and thought into) it was the artists that were responsible for their art. He would offer his thoughts if asked though.
Oh wow, I'm only 5 minutes in and he's already said so much cool stuff that resonates with me around neomania, timelessness/the lindy effect etc (I've read too much Taleb recently). Thanks for the link!
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadYes, he was cantankerous. Marched to the beat of his own drum, and didn't give a FF about what other people thought. Loved this quote from Tape Op:
"It seemed like most of the music I liked was coming from San Francisco. I don't remember one fucking thing coming out of L.A. that I cared about. And skateboarding. What did that have to do with punk music? What's next, yo-yo tricks?"
https://tapeop.com/interviews/87/steve-albini-Nirvana-Pixies...
His essays and observations have been discussed here from time to time. Here are a few:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30892081
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37132320
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935526
Albini also has an excellent Nardwuar interview:
https://youtu.be/1Vjn8u7HP1o
RIP Steve. What a legend.
Anyway, the way he talked and explained the music business was always legendary.
Despite my phenomenal experience hearing them live in Cambridge MA in the 90s. Loudest band I’ve ever suffered through. But that was live.
Rid of Me is extremely devisive. Excellent record, and extremely influential. Just think of Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days take on it. But Albini's laissez-faire (non-)production??
I'd take even more exteme versions of Albini's "non-production" that the overpolished turds served by 99% of bands like RHCP and the like...
Of course indie production isn't for everybody, but there's always The Eagles for the rest... or Coldplay or something
I’m a huge, huge fan of Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac, and Steve Albini’s production (Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Jesus Lizard’s discography, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Brainiac’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, Songs:Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Company, plus hundreds more)
He could be a bit of a dick but he was an insanely talented musician and engineer/producer. I don’t think any single person has had as much of effect on the music I listen to as Steve did.
RIP Steve Albini, your impact on indie music will not be forgotten, and neither will your belt guitar strap. You will be dearly missed, there’s very few people cut from the same cloth you were.
A collection of Steve Albini band LPs
Big Black - Atomizer: https://youtu.be/03cDvRl3edo
Big Black - Songs About Fucking: https://youtu.be/s0xCAZLE7c8
Rapeman - Two Nuns and a Pack Mule: https://youtu.be/JI4keToT1jM
Shellac - At Action Park: https://youtu.be/AC7Pkwmllow
Shellac - Terraform: https://youtu.be/MueqsKUUlcE
Shellac - 1000 Hurts: https://youtu.be/7fXwbFxenC0
Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound: https://youtu.be/jQ_Logfsfuw
Shellac - Dude, Incredible: https://youtu.be/Gh-SBGIx-2I
Shellac - To All Trains: (not on YouTube, this is set for released next week, posthumously)
A true legend, and big coincidence since I discovered yet another of his production a week ago: Zeni Geva's last three LPs. Almost as important as the ubiquitous Dan Swano in my collection:
To actually hear "In Utero" in all its Albini-esque glory, you must find the 2013 20th Anniversary Edition, it's on the 2nd disc.https://crookedfiddleband.bandcamp.com/album/overgrown-tales https://crookedfiddleband.bandcamp.com/album/moving-pieces-o...
Other noteworthy Albini-engineered bands for me: Oxbow, Low, Whitehouse, Labradford, Burning Witch, Godspeed's U.X.O album. Peter Sotos' Buyer's Market is one of the most insane albums I've ever had the displeasure to listen to, and Albini apparently produced it, although I don't hear any obvious influence.
What a huge bummer and loss.
I can't think of another single person more influential and important to my own musical journey than Steve Albini. Guys like him are supposed to live to a ripe old age telling stories. It's just a horrible loss.
https://www.earwolf.com/episode/dave-grohl-krist-novoselic-a...
https://bsky.app/profile/electricalwsop.bsky.social/post/3kr...
[0] https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana
Outside of his position on royalties, he was one of the best and harshest critics of the music industry:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
"As he kept working, making hundreds of records across many more sessions, Albini became more comfortable stepping aside. Experiences like the Plant and Page record reminded him he was just a cog, there to enable someone else’s expression. These days, once Albini has agreed to record an artist, he begins by asking them to state their expectations, what bands they’re into, how they’d like to sound, how they’ve been disappointed in previous sessions. (The process is not unlike starting with a new therapist.)"
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-...
what has changed since he wrote that piece is that the concept of "the artist" has been heavily blurred by mainstream music that predominantly features synthesized instruments. if I'm singing words written by one person to a melody written by second over a track composed of thousands of different samples sent through various filters by a third, who is "the artist"?
Steve Albini recorded the songs you brought in with you. Just a different thing.
That said, I think his relationship with his bands opened up areas for him to contribute to the core product more than Albini perhaps did (Martin played piano on some tracks, scored out any classical parts for other musicians, etc).
Martin may have been the middle ground between the 'producer-as-top-billing' and 'paid like a plumber' spectrum Albini seems to identify.
Radio was all AM, which is mono.
> “Think about it this way: My business is a business of the first type, where everyone involved feels like they’re working on a common project. Everyone involved feels like we are equally valuable. When our clients come in, and they don’t see that there’s a power structure or a hierarchy; nobody has the big office or anything. Everybody is working together as comrades on this project.”
> “The remuneration is very equitable. Everybody gets paid the same. I make the same amount of money in a month as the newest employee that we have. So there is a fundamental difference between that and virtually any corporate structure. But you can’t expect people who feel like they are less valuable to a corporation, who feel like their effort, their input, and their opinion means less than someone else in that corporation. You can’t expect those people to jump in and all be pulling for the same results, team players. Because you have defined for them that they are not all pulling for one thing, that they are not team players. You have defined their role for them as subordinate.”
I recommend the Kreative Kontrol podcast episode with him and Fred Armisen from last year where they talk about their experiences in the Chicago music scene.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BeHekAjVm72b9Sc9FlCtu?si=6...
* "I would like to be paid like a plumber" - https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana
* "The Problem with Music" - https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
edit: viral pericarditis, actually, before it was a hot topic
His story about the band cut on an album budget is mind blowing too.
Longevity is part genetics, part lifestyle, and part just dumb luck. Unfortunately Steve just got a bit unlucky, or bad genetics, or both. Or maybe in spite of his alcohol- and drug-free lifestyle he just had a really bad diet.
It seems that no other generation seems to be facing their mortality much sooner than Gen Xers.
Clerks 3 is a movie about two old Gen Xers coping with getting old, having heart attacks, coping with grief, struggling with loneliness, while the world passes them by.
Time to spend an afternoon blasting Wedding Present's "Seamonsters", among other masterpieces he had his fingers on (esp Surfer Rosa as other people mention)
Huge loss.
My one story: A band I was in at the time recorded drums at Electrical Audio in 2010 (I think) and I was the drummer. Albini was not involved in the project and though he was around, we didn't see him much. I would wear this really bad t-shirt with the sleeves cut off to keep cool while playing. As Albini passed by me one time, he looked at me and _very_ sarcastically said, "Don't worry, you look great" and kept walking. That was our only interaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKEzHie9tAI&ab_channel=SAEAu...
In my personal list of top 10 albums of all time, Albini recorded six of them. I say "recorded" instead of "produced" because this is more akin to his style: set up microphones and record the band as they sound.