The Chicago noise wrangler Steve Albini’s signature recording technique was the invisible force that brought alternative rock’s most recognizable sounds to life. Preferring the term “recording engineer” to “producer,” he championed a style of elevated realism that remains as influential as the tracks he captured — most famously drum-heavy albums by Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey and the Jesus Lizard.
Those sessions would define his career, but Albini, who died on Tuesday at 61, was loathe to say he had a “sound.” Bands of all D.I.Y. genres — from the famous to the unknown — converged on his Electrical Audio studio seeking what he really provided: an organic, authentic and honest representation of their work at a reasonable price.
Albini estimated he’d recorded “a couple thousand” albums in a 2018 interview; his productivity was related to the purity of his process. Albini sessions were done quickly and affordably. Instruments were recorded with room microphones to capture the natural reverberations of the space. Analogue gear and one-take recordings were preferred. “Anyone who has made records for more than a very short period will recognize that trying to manipulate a sound after it has been recorded is never as effective as when it’s recorded correctly in the first place,” he told Sound on Sound magazine.
Here are 10 songs that demonstrate his philosophy of the studio. (Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.)
Pixies, ‘Where Is My Mind’ (1988)
For the first record he recorded outside of his friend circle, Albini used the buzzy Boston band Pixies as lab animals for his sonic ideas: loading its debut album, “Surfer Rosa,” with off-the-cuff studio chatter, refusing to use silence in between songs and making the bassist Kim Deal sing the reverb-soaked background vocals on “Where Is My Mind?” in the studio’s echo-y bathroom. In retrospect, Albini said his production touches were intrusive, but the next generation of alt-rock titans found them invigorating. “‘Where Is My Mind?’” later became one of the records that other bands would reference when they wanted to work with me,” he told The Guardian. “Nobody expected it to take off because no underground American band of that generation had even a fleeting notion of commercial success as a goal. People just wanted to blow minds.”
The Breeders, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ (1990)
When Albini worked with Deal on her solo project the Breeders, “I instantly preferred it to the Pixies,” he said in the book “Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies.” “There was a simultaneous charm to Kim’s presentation to her music that’s both childlike and giddy and also completely mature and kind of dirty.” The band, often in pajamas, banged out its debut LP, “Pod,” in the first week of a two-week session. “Steve Albini wasn’t interested in ‘perfecting’ a song or a performance: His métier was getting the best sound from the equipment and pressing ‘record,’” the Breeders bassist Josephine Wiggs said in a 2008 news release. “He was utterly pleased with himself when mixing the record, saying, ‘Look — no EQ!’”
The Jesus Lizard, ‘Mouth Breather’ (1991)
“When I think of the Jesus Lizard, I think of them as the greatest band I’ve ever seen, as the best musicians I’ve ever worked with, and as the purest melding of the sublime and the profane,” Albini said in “The Jesus Lizard Book.” The group of noise-rock chaos engines was prone to injury, audience entanglements and public nudity, and Albini somehow harnessed its energy across four full-length LPs. “Steve worked quickly and cheaply, and got good deals at studios,” the band’s bassist David Wm. Sims said in “Book.” “He was inclined to offer more input than we were looking for, but didn’t seem to mind that we generally ignored him.”
PJ Harvey, ‘Rid of Me’ (1993)
“I knew I wanted to work with Steve Albini from listening to Pixies records, and hearing the sounds he was getting, which were unlike any other sounds that I’d heard on vinyl,” PJ Harvey told Spin about recording her breakthrough album, “Rid of Me.” “I really wanted that very bare, very real sound. I knew that it would suit the songs. It’s like touching real objects or feeling the grain of wood.” Some reviewers blanched at Albini’s caustic, drum-dominant production of “Rid of Me,” but the album would prove to be one of the most enduring of the ’90s.
Nirvana, ‘Serve the Servants’ (1993)
Following Nirvana’s multiplatinum coup, “Nevermind,” the trio retreated to a secluded spot in Minnesota to work with the guy behind the Pixies, Breeders and Jesus Lizard records they loved. “We didn’t wanna be sellouts and Albini is known for having integrity,” the Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic told Mojo. “It just seemed like it made sense, going back to our roots instead of just making another really slick album.” Recorded in around 12 days using a handful of first-takes, Nirvana’s final studio LP, “In Utero,” was a feedback-soaked, ragged-edged document of a band that had already rewired rock music to embrace the ugly and imperfect.
Neurosis, ‘The Doorway’ (1999)
Albini helmed the last six studio albums from Neurosis, titans of the repetitive, hypnotic, deeply impassioned subgenre known as “post-metal.” The frontman Steve Von Till told Fact magazine why it kept tapping him: “My amp is gonna sound like you’ve got your head stuck up against my cabinet. That’s the way it should be, nothing getting in the way of it. There’s no tricks, there’s no gimmicks, it’s true recording. The way it was with Zeppelin or Sabbath or any of your favorite records from the ’70s.”
Shellac, ‘Prayer to God’ (2000)
This ultraviolent venomous revenge fantasy remains the magnum opus of Albini’s noise-rock band Shellac. “It was inspired by a casual reflection on the idiom of the murder ballad, and how [expletive] up it was that we have a tradition of song that is basically dedicated to men murdering women,” Albini told the magazine Listen. “Then what if there was a guy who was too much of a wimp to actually murder anybody but just as frustrated and entitled.”
Low, ‘Sunflower‘ (2001)
Though Albini is best known for enhancing the ferocity of heavy rock bands, he was also a master of capturing the intimate, whether recording fragile “slowcore” bands like Bedhead or art-folk iconoclasts like Nina Nastasia. The Minneapolis trio Low’s “Secret Name” (1999) and “Things We Lost in the Fire” (2001) endure as essential documents of the one-of-a-kind harmonies shared by the married couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. For “Fire,” the band had Albini record strings. “The reputation I think that was out there was like, ‘Oh no, don’t try anything wacky with Steve. Everything’s gotta be real and it’s gotta be punk,’” Sparhawk remembered on the “Life of the Record” podcast, “Well, no, actually. He was kind of excited about recording different things and excited about trying different things.”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls’ (2002)
For its third album, the cinematic nine-piece crescendo-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor moved away from its majestic multipart collage art in favor of what its record label said was “just raw, angry, dissonant, epic instrumental rock.” Albini caught the band’s natural intensity on this 20-minute blast of defiance.
Cloud Nothings, ‘Wasted Days’ (2012)
In the last decade or so, Albini served as a magnet for young bands clearly indebted to his abrasive ’90s output — high-decibel acts like Metz, Ty Segall, Ken Mode and Screaming Females. His work for Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings signaled the transformation of the band from a breezy power-pop upstart to a critically acclaimed noise-rock force. “We wanted it to sound like us playing,” the Cloud Nothings frontman Dylan Baldi told Spin. “And that’s what Albini does: He records bands playing and they sound like they’re playing a live show.”
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