“Musician, studio engineer and the mastermind behind some of rock’s greatest albums”: Steve Albini, punk guitar icon and producer for Nirvana, Pixies, dies at 61

Steve Albini, a punk and alt-rock icon whose knife-edged, metallic guitar style influenced players the world over, has died at the age of 61, Pitchfork reports. Staff at Albini’s recording studio, Electrical Audio, said that he died of a heart attack.

As the frontman and guitarist for Big Black, and later Shellac, Steve Albini developed an abrasive lyrical and guitar style that proved tremendously influential to generations of alt-rock and metal bands. 

Albini also helped shape the sound of alt-rock as a prolific producer, most notably manning the boards for Nirvana’s final album, In Utero, and the Pixies’ iconic Surfer Rosa album. 

Born in 1962 and raised in Montana, Albini – in his early teens – fell under the influence of punk-rock. For the rest of his life, his guitar playing would embrace the punk ethos – loud, aggressive, and uncompromising, but retaining a sense of tunefulness underneath the noise. 

While attending college in the early ’80s, Albini formed the seminal indie band Big Black. Backed by a Roland TR-606 drum machine, and influenced by the metallic, industrial sounds of early Public Image Ltd. records, Big Black stood out in the nascent alt-rock world with brutal songs that touched on the darkest sides of humanity. 

Leading it all was the relentless, buzzing, chainsaw-like twin-guitar attack of Albini and guitarist Santiago Durango, who perfectly played musical foil to the former’s dark lyrics. 

Displaying the disregard for fame and fortune that would continue throughout Albini’s career, Big Black broke up just as their star was beginning to rise, disbanding after their seminal 1987 album, Songs About Fucking. 

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From there, Albini began to turn to production work – though he always cited his work as “engineering,” rather than producing. In this capacity, Albini would prove even more influential to the development of alt-rock, taking the bare-bones, no-nonsense sonic approach of Big Black to some of the most influential albums of the ’80s and ’90s.

It was Albini who manned the boards for the Pixies’ 1988 debut, Surfer Rosa, helping craft its minimalist, creeping sound – defined by spidery, jagged guitar lines and riffs not too dissimilar to those found on Big Black’s albums. 

The influence of Surfer Rosa in the development of rock in the years that followed is difficult to overstate, and its sound would lay the groundwork for that of Albini’s most famous clients, Nirvana. 

Coming off of Nevermind, an album that just about single-handedly changed the face of rock music overnight, Nirvana wanted to change things up completely for its follow-up. Looking to embrace their more cacophonous side, and, for Kurt Cobain, a much rawer and nastier guitar sound, Nirvana turned to Albini for what would become In Utero.

“He [Cobain] had a couple of amps, a Randall Switchmaster and a Fender Quad Reverb that he mostly used,” Albini – speaking about the In Utero sessions – told Louder in 2023. “The Quad had a couple of broken tubes, so its overdrive sound was really raspy and unpredictable. He liked that sound and it featured on pretty much every song.”

In Utero brought Albini’s penchant for getting raw guitar sounds reminiscent of his own playing to the world. Years later, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant – seeking a return to their own thunderous form – turned to Albini for engineering work on their 1998 reunion album, Walking into Clarksdale.

On his own, Albini formed the band Shellac in the early ’90s. Though less prone to controversy-courting than Big Black, Shellac retained the former band’s aggressive approach, with Albini exploring new six-string frontiers – while always retaining his trademark edge on the instrument.

Shellac were due to release a new album, To All Trains, next week (May 17). 

“Musician, studio engineer and the mastermind behind some of rock’s greatest albums. A hero to us all. Thank you for setting the standard so high,” wrote Rough Trade of Albini on X. 

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