R.I.P. Steve Albini

Legendary Chicago musician and engineer Steve Albini died of a heart attack in his Electrical Audio studio, according to a report from Pitchfork. He was 61.

Albini played in a number of influential punk and post-hardcore bands throughout his career, including Big Black, who were the subject of a chapter in Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, as well as Shellac, which he’s been a member of since the early ’90s.

Albini has had a long career of recording music from other artists, and prefers being called an “engineer” rather than a “producer.” Among some of the records he’s worked on include PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co. and Nirvana’s In Utero. He was also an avid poker player, and in 2018 he won a $105,000 prize at the World Series of Poker.

In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, he said about his potential legacy, “I’m doing it, and that’s what matters to me – the fact that I get to keep doing it. That’s the whole basis of it. I was doing it yesterday, and I’m gonna do it tomorrow, and I’m gonna carry on doing it.”

Albini’s band Shellac was scheduled to release their new album To All Trains, their first in a decade, later this month.