Shellac frontman and legendary alt. rock engineer Steve Albini useless at 61

Steve Albini, one of many best-known personalities in US underground rock, frontman of Shellac and the recording engineer on traditional albums by Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey, The Jesus Lizard and extra, has died, aged 61.

Albini died of a coronary heart assault final evening (Could 7), employees at his Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio confirmed to music web site Pitchfork.

Born in Pasadena, California, Albini grew up in Montana, earlier than shifting to Evanston, Illinois to check at NorthWestern College. Whereas learning journalism on the college, Albini initially carved out a popularity as an acerbic fanzine author, and in 1981, he fashioned Massive Black, a band who would develop into one of the vital influential, hard-hitting acts in US different rock.

The liner notes the notoriously outspoken Albini penned for Massive Black’s posthumous reside album Pigpile might have referred particularly to that band’s modus operandi however additionally they laid out the fundamental rules which knowledgeable his life’s work, from his days as a fanzine author by way of to his profession as a musician and studio technician.

“Deal with everybody with as a lot respect as he deserves (and no extra),” he wrote. “Keep away from individuals who attraction to our vainness or ambition (they’ll all the time have an angle). Function as a lot as attainable other than the ‘music scene’. Take no shit from anybody within the course of.”

Like so many US musicians of his era, Albini was turned on to punk rock by the Ramones. Talking to this author three years in the past, Albini mentioned, “I didn’t know something about music besides what leaked out of the favored consciousness, so when this band appeared, fully-formed, that performed immediately into the obsessions of me and my dorky associates – horror movies and trash tradition, basic adolescent misbehaviour and transgressive ideas – I took to them like a fish to water. It was inescapable that this is able to be the band and the scene for me. Rock music on the time had a whole lot of pageantry and pomp connected, and a whole lot of it struck me as affected nonsense. Then the Ramones appeared, dressed like me and my associates, with no robes or smoke machines, and that appeared a lot extra highly effective.”