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Steve Albini has died

ilamont
18 replies
1d1h

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?"

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

rurban
6 replies
20h52m

He was a legend as musician, and as producer, despite destroying PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. What a major fuckup!

Anyway, the way he talked and explained the music business was always legendary.

touseol
2 replies
19h12m

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.

moomin
1 replies
18h49m

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.

browningstreet
0 replies
17h42m

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.

ggm
1 replies
13h12m

Search 6+ comments up for somebody with exactly the opposite view of what he did to that track: de gustibus and all that.

rurban
0 replies
12h10m

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??

tptacek
0 replies
17h24m

I don't think there's a single track on the 4-Track Demos that outdoes its sibling on Rid of Me, which is Harvey's best album.

consumer451
2 replies
23h3m

Surfer Rosa was probably the most influential album on my musical life.

Albini also has an excellent Nardwuar interview:

https://youtu.be/1Vjn8u7HP1o

wyclif
0 replies
17h13m

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.

randomcarbloke
0 replies
4h10m

I adore how immune he is to NardWuar's hateful surprises.

odiroot
1 replies
22h6m

I can really recommend Songs About Fucking by Big Black. Especially their dope version of Kraftwerk's Das Model.

throwaway743
0 replies
16h9m

In addition, listen to Atomizer.

darby_eight
1 replies
1d1h

Yo-yo tricks could be pretty punk I imagine

ompogUe
0 replies
1d

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?

vondur
0 replies
19h42m

He couldn't be more wrong with regards to Skate Punk.

throwaway743
0 replies
16h12m

So sad to hear of his passing. Atomizer is one of my all time favorite albums. His work is timeless and will carry him on.

internet101010
0 replies
18h37m

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.

quickthrowman
11 replies
1d1h

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.

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)

BoingBoomTschak
8 replies
1d

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.

adolph
1 replies
22h34m

Also, what is this jqmusic executable with the jq style query?

BoingBoomTschak
0 replies
22h28m

Just a jq wrapper that adds -e and includes some functions

  $ cat ~/bin/jqmusic
  #!/usr/bin/env bash
  
  exec jq -e "${@:1:$(($#-2))}" "include \"music\"; ${@: -2:1}" "${@: -1}" >/dev/null 2>&1
  $ cat ~/.jq/music.jq
  def year: .released | match("[0-9]{4}").string | tonumber;
  def has_genre(str): .genres.primary | any(. == str);
  def match_genre(regexp): .genres.primary | any(match(regexp));
Together with https://git.sr.ht/~q3cpma/rymscrap to get the actual JSON.

quickthrowman
0 replies
20h56m

I will check out Zeni Geva, thanks for sharing!

hipnoizz
0 replies
21h56m

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.

ggorlen
0 replies
14h28m

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.

geoffeg
0 replies
23h19m

What are you using to generate album.json?

fnordlord
0 replies
22h51m

I've always counted Prayer to God up there in my "best songs ever" list.

What a huge bummer and loss.

arp242
0 replies
1d

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...

breput
11 replies
1d

"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."

[0] https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana

mgkimsal
5 replies
23h25m

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.

TylerE
3 replies
21h56m

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.

gizajob
2 replies
21h6m

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.

mgkimsal
0 replies
19h51m

There just wasn't much focus on stereo until the late 60s. Most acts back then have stereo mixes that are not much more than an afterthought.

TylerE
0 replies
19h8m

That was how everything was mixed in the early days of stereo. Beatles actually got away from it sooner than many.

Radio was all AM, which is mono.

tptacek
0 replies
19h18m

It's not hard to reconcile: Albini didn't want to be George Martin.

beezlebroxxxxxx
3 replies
23h40m

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:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

leetcrew
0 replies
22h47m

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"?

breput
0 replies
22h56m

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.)"

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-...

adw
0 replies
15h55m

Those (hip-hop) producers are musician-songwriters. They’re more in the Brill Building/Phil Spector mode.

Steve Albini recorded the songs you brought in with you. Just a different thing.

greenie_beans
0 replies
18h22m

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.”
zzzbra
8 replies
1d

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?

agumonkey
2 replies
1d

yeah, unlike rock stars with wild lives, I did expect a guy like him to live long

jprival
1 replies
21h29m

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

agumonkey
0 replies
20h21m

Oh, thanks for the link. I had no idea.

His story about the band cut on an album budget is mind blowing too.

arp242
1 replies
1d

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.

caf
0 replies
18h0m

Lemmy and Prince being two that come to mind immediately.

thr0waway001
0 replies
21h49m

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.

newobj
0 replies
18h59m

uhh because the only Gen Xers currently dying are the ones that are dying young?

justinator
0 replies
23h58m

I think this line of thinking is a casual example of survivorship bias.

runnr_az
7 replies
23h47m

We all agree that Jawbreaker's "24 Hour Revenge Therapy" was his best production work, right?

spudlyo
1 replies
17h38m

Oh my god. I had no idea he produced that. That record is of monumental importance to one of my dearest friends, and hooked me on early Emo in a way that Rites of Spring never could. Going to listen again and try to detect the invisible hand of Albini. What stands out to you about the production?

runnr_az
0 replies
14h10m

The listed producer, “Flus” was Albini’s cat. That’s how punk Blake and the gang were - didn’t even list their indie-famous producer on their most popular album. Punk as fuck.

As to why, it’s a fantastic example of what Albini did best - it sounds like a real band, raw and live, both melodic and rough around the edges. The guitar sound, iconic, but in the service of the songs. There’s a kind of efficiency to the album - like, no wasted fat, audio gimmick, etc… the Alpinist of punk, bring nothing you don’t need.

Can’t wait for someone to generate a version of Nevermind with the production of 24 Hour…

pstuart
1 replies
22h8m

But I'm gonna be that guy that says "Dear You" is better. To each their own, but it's a pity that album got slagged.

runnr_az
0 replies
21h45m

We were such dicks back then. I blame Steve Albini :)

parpfish
0 replies
18h20m

I thought Joanna Newsom's Ys was great (although very different from his best known works)

nemo44x
0 replies
14h41m

Pod by The Breeders imo.

adw
0 replies
15h52m

I think you can make a case for “Things We Lost In The Fire” by Low extremely easily; or for “After Murder Park” by the Auteurs. As a recording engineer he had a lot more range than people gave him credit for, largely because his own music was so abrasive.

laurex
6 replies
19h24m

This is one of those threads where you may discover people you haven't seen for a zillion years are on Hacker News. And though I never knew him well, he was nice to me on the occasions I had to interact with him, though you know, there's also a kind of unapologetic misogynistic arrogance in his musical catalogue (umm, Rapeman?) that his legacy will need to contend with.

laurex
2 replies
19h9m

Yes, he evolved! But that work (fwiw more the actual lyrics than the band name itself) still is part of a legacy.

gosub100
1 replies
15h34m

You discovered that people make mistakes. Congratulations

laurex
0 replies
15h28m

Sigh. I think it’s possible to look at public figures and both see how they are praiseworthy, perhaps corrected errors, and still had impacts with their “mistakes.” I always hope that on HN there’s room for nuance, not just like sarcastic comments implying that a critique was one-dimensional and ill intentioned.

nemo44x
0 replies
14h42m

Rapeman was a completely ironic and funny name because the band was these scrawny, autistic, nerdy dudes that were the antithesis of rapey culture, at least superficially. And he did regret it for a variety of reasons which I believe he was bullied into but w/e as it wasn’t that important.

awkward
0 replies
19h3m

He’s been fairly open and public recently about his relationship with “edgy” art, his feeling that it didn’t destroy any hidden hypocrisy, and regret for it’s legacy of a coarser society.

I don’t mean to express any apologies he didn’t make, but I’ve appreciated his public thoughtfulness about it.

glammon
5 replies
15h52m

Anyone here celebrating Steve Albini's life should be aware that this guy was an unrepentant pedophile:

https://medium.com/@MoonMetropolis/now-that-steve-albini-is-...

An actual quote from him:

Jaded as I am, I can't help but flip seeing a girl and guy of twelve or thirteen, tops, ramming Martel bottles up each other's asses. These are not the Dutch equivalent of abused trailer-park kids, either. They look to be in excellent health and seem to be honestly enjoying this. Makes all the conventional arguments against this kind of thing seem really silly.

They're kids. Kids like to play with their own and other people's privates. They're just being photographed at it. Now, people who get a voyeuristic charge out of watching them, like me, I guess, well, we've got some grip-on-reality problems. There's maybe 1% of all pornography that has any effect on me, and it's definitely not a turn-on very often. But when it is, and it's as weird as this, it’s pretty hard to take.

Another, even worse:

The cover of PURE 2 is a guy holding open a toddler’s puny hole so his spuzz can dribble out. The girl is past crying. She is destroyed.

Like I said, I like that sort of thing.

He's basically the Jimmy Savile of record producers. Something to consider when glorifying his musical achievements.

DoesntMatter22
1 replies
14h24m

If that is real then that is absolutely insane. I had no idea. I only learned of him recently during a Rick Beato interview, didn't realize the guy was this nuts.

throwaway63bc2k
0 replies
14h5m

I wouldn't be too surprised if they're real, and yeah it's pretty gross.

Albini was a well known edgelord in his 20s, and liked to say shocking bullshit to provoke & upset people. It's hard to say if this is evidence of anything beyond that.

He has been very apologetic for at least some of his past antics, band names, lyrics.

- https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-...

- https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/steve-albini-counsel-cul...

throwupamdaway1
0 replies
12h42m

In the full context of the article posted, I think it’s hard to not consider that as anything but an unfiltered fascination with shock depravity - where I think many in society are generally comfortable with the more filtered form (rotten.com, 4chan, etc…)

quickthrowman
0 replies
4h4m

I find it hard to believe that he’s a pedophile. I won’t deny that he looked at CSAM since he readily admits it. He was well-known for being fascinated by depravity and murder and the darker side of human behavior. Here is an excerpt from the liner notes of Big Black’s Atomizer about the song Jordan, Minnesota, which is about child abuse (which ended up not being true, or not nearly as widespread as claimed, nearly all charges were eventually dropped. This was part of the satanic child abuse 80s moral panic):

”you can’t think about it, really, because if you do then you go crazy, stark gibbering spitting and pissing in your pants crazy, so you don’t think about it. but once in a while you do think about it, and there’s all this weird shit going on and you can’t believe it can all really be like this. you think of all the bad, bad things you do to yourself out of some weird need. you go places, bad places, to fulfill some gnawing need, and you do ugly things to yourself and other people not because of the ugliness–well, sometimes because of the ugliness, i guess–but usually because there’s something else there and you’d do it no matter what. there are people who do. no matter what. they fuck their children, for shit’s sake. a whole town. bus drivers, school teachers, cops, storekeepers, housewives, little boys, little girls. very little, they play games with it, like very special hide-and-seek, and very special spin the bottle and very special poker, and every day the little boys have to get up and walk to the bus stop with the daddy who mouth raped them the night before, and they have to get on the bus with the bus driver who rubbed his shit in their hair, and say “yes maam” to the lady who made them lick her the night before, and then they have to go home, you know, where daddy and mommy have been making martinis for the little get together later on, and go hide under the covers where they know they’ll be found anyway and day in and day out for the rest of their motherfucking lives and then they grow up and they have babies and like i said, you don’t think about it because you go crazy."

These are not the words of a pedophile.

foco_tubi
0 replies
53m

Take this entire article with a grain of salt. It was written by an internet troll named Joshua Goldberg, recently released from prison just last month, who after constructing a number of fake personas across various internet forums and social media communities, was convicted on charges of attempting to carry out a bombing on the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

tptacek
4 replies
19h11m

Guy was as Chicago as a polish sausage.

Contributions to the remembrance thread:

Albini on Steely Dan ("the Dan"):

https://twitter.com/electricalWSOP/status/162260720209465753...

His old cooking blog, where I learned that cutting the casing off a hot italian and smooshing it flat is called a "torpedo" (at least at Paulina Market):

https://web.archive.org/web/20180125095923/http://whatimadeh...

Later

Another: his interest in uniforms, designs, and the jumpsuits they wear at Electrical:

https://paullukas.substack.com/p/talking-uniforms-logos-and-...

mixmastamyk
3 replies
1h48m

What's the context around the Steely Dan comment?

tptacek
2 replies
57m

Not liking Steely Dan.

mixmastamyk
1 replies
23m

Hmm, they were musician's musicians, not for everyone perhaps. I could write a comment crapping on anyone from Louis Armstrong to... Dua Lipa? Not clear on why it would increase one's stature or be worthy of note.

(Thought it may have something to do with a midwest dislike of late 70s west-coast AOR fusion.)

tptacek
0 replies
18m

Sounds like you have the context for the thread!

brnacl
4 replies
21h5m

In 2009 my band traveled from Nashville to Chicago for the honor of recording with Steve at Electrical Audio. We loved his drum tones and his use of analog tape in a live band setting.

He was quirky, brilliant, quiet, and kind of hilarious to work with. He wore disheveled blue coveralls with a lowercase "e" on the back for 5 straight days.

They fed us as many lattes we could stomach for all hours of the day, and he didn't even care if we smoked cigarettes the entire time. Slept on cots in his building, while he stayed in his "personal" area.

Watching him cut 2 inch tape the old fashioned way was one of the nerd highlights of my life. RIP Steve, and thank you.

ilamont
2 replies
20h57m

Besides working with analog tape, what else in his process was either surprising or a revelation?

In the interview with Conan and Dave and Kris that someone linked to earlier (https://www.earwolf.com/episode/dave-grohl-krist-novoselic-a...), he really tries to disabuse Conan of the notion that he is wielding "magic" ... he basically says it's Dave setting up a regular set of drums in a room that has good acoustics, he mics them, and presses "record" - he is just trying to capture the band as a band making music together in a room. He said it was similar to what Butch Vig did with Nevermind before the suits forced them to use a different sound and effects in post.

Although someone else in the interview did mention that he had special German microphones ...

szszrk
0 replies
4h0m

It's not exactly a secret - he was very vocal about his process and there are many interviews and seminars easily available on youtube and such.

There was a few tricks, but no magic at all. You more or less summed it up well.

He believed he should capture band's sound as it is heard by the band itself. On the contrary to most modern music production where each instrument is recorded in isolation, sound is transformed multiple times before it even hits "tape" and in later production you try to recreate a feeling of particular place/equipment/"playing live" synthetically. Which often doesn't work that well - it's like taking bands live energy out of equation to add it back in post processing (good luck).

He despised that approach. Claimed the musician knows how he want's to sound and he is in no position to change that vision. He helped to capture the track more like the musician hears it in the recording/rehearsal/concert room.

He cared about capturing well basic tracks and claimed modern production (mastering) is insanely overhyped and meddles with vision that band had. Which is completely true :)

So in the end he cared a lot about choosing right hardware and microphones (had a collection of several hundreds) while always chose the ones which musician liked. Even if he thought they were terrible in that setting. Because that meant a musician feels that it sounds more to what musician himself hears when he plays. But - the further in the production stages the less he interfered. Instead of messing with ProTools plugins for days, he captured what band found natural and kind of simplified the rest.

He developed plenty of techniques ranging from simple planning (at first step he gave bands a notebook and asked to write down what they want to hear), or not to get underfoot (kept opinions more to himself and chose what musician preferred - which he learned the hard way).

On technical side, he chose to capture more of the room sound of the instruments (especially drums). He also used a lot of microphones placed far in the room to help musicians hear themselves more like they usually hear themselves during practice/concert. For instance, he used sound from such far placed mics into monitors (what musician hears). And delayed them slightly, to give the recording drummer a feeling of actual room size/echo (In spite of his ears being isolated form that). Or did a trick of flipping phase of vocalists microphone when he seemed not confident. In hope to find a setting when bone conduction sound is in phase with headphones sound, so that musician has more natural comfort and simply performs better. Apparently this happened sometimes and I can fully related into "not feeling it" while using studio monitors, despite being few feet from an amp.

Those things indeed make it feel much more like a real band playing next to you. Mostly because the band felt tighter and actually played live together, and not track-by-track.

My favorite recordings of my (amateur) bands were always just single microphone placed in the back of the room, capturing more like it really sounded in there. Very satisfying experience and so different from modern recording and bedroom production.

brnacl
0 replies
17m

My favorite takeaway was when I said "Man, this sounds great! You really can hear the warmth from the analog tape." His response: "I have no idea what you're talking about." He just stared, waiting for me to respond. As a young man of 29 years I had never felt so stupid in my life. He timed it well though, and followed up with an explanation of the mics he was using and his disdain for ProTools.

tptacek
0 replies
19h16m

My brother is an audio engineer of a sort† and just this afternoon told us that he felt like his team at the venue he works needed a uniform, and he asked Albini about, and as a result everyone ended up with the same Red Kap coveralls Albini wears.

† (I say this only because I don't know precisely what sort he is)

nonrandomstring
3 replies
22h23m

In my mind, Albini holds a plain speaking American slot besides Hunter S. Thompson, for the similarity of these remarks:

  "I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe
  sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit." - Steve Albini

  "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long
   plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die
   like dogs. There's also a negative side.". - Hunter S Thompson
When you're good, and you know it, not because people tell you or shower you with praise, but because it comes from love, from the heart, then you know there's nobody whose ass you have to kiss.

Steve Albini was an exceptionally competent and emotionally generous person who spoke about the industry as the wide-eyed boy saw the Emperor's "New Clothes". Not bitter or superior or excoriating, just casually pointing out the truth; that it's a stinking corrupt pile of shit that deserves to die. Wish there were more Steve Albinis in the tech world, confident going their own way and not sucking up to big-tech pedlars of digital dross.

Time for some Pixies...

Sad loss. RIP.

antod
0 replies
18h39m

> Wish there were more Steve Albinis in the tech world, confident going their own way and not sucking up to big-tech pedlars of digital dross.

Thanks for colliding those two worlds into each other for me in a way that never occurred to me. I think the tech world needs it even more than the music world does. eg the way free software and open source's wins have been diluted and sidelined by big tech and big cloud.

The_Blade
0 replies
20h47m

Henry Rollins

Integrape
0 replies
4h15m

Steve had a degree in Journalism, and it shows in his writings.

sodapopcan
2 replies
1d

Oh wow, shit.

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.

relaxing
0 replies
23h12m

Steve wore a lot of shitty tshirts too, it may not have been entirely sarcastic.

denvermullets
0 replies
23h14m

Hahah, that's amazing

joemi
2 replies
23h6m

A lot of the bigger name albums he engineered were ones I listened to and loved before knowing that he was a common thread between them (or even who he was in general), but one that I gave a listen to specifically because he engineered it was an album called Stella by a band named Uzeda. I had never heard of them before, but it was wonderful! All the words that often describe his sound (and also his music) apply here. In fact, I believe Uzeda is often compared to Shellac, which seems apt. I highly recommend it, if folks are looking for a good lesser-known album he worked on.

hipnoizz
1 replies
22h1m

Approached Uzeda a few times (I'm much into noise-rock-and-all-the-friendly-neighbourhood) but it didn't click. On the other hand https://bellini.bandcamp.com/album/the-precious-prize-of-gra... (which consist of 2/4th or 3/4th of Uzeda I think plus Alexis Fleisig from GvsB) is great.

Anyway, I was kind of shattered by the news. All the stuff Steve Albini created (both as the sound engineer and the bands he played with) falls squarely into what moves me (for whatever reasons). And I think he was a really genuine person (outspoken, yes).

joemi
0 replies
20h11m

Thanks, I'll have to check them out.

droptablemain
2 replies
1d

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:

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.

nemo44x
0 replies
23h51m

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.

evjan
0 replies
22h46m

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!

amarcozzi
2 replies
21h27m

I paused at the name because there was a great scientist and engineer named Frank Albini in the field of wildfire science. Lo and behold Steve Albini was the son of said Frank Albini. I haven't heard of Steve Albini before, and I'm not familiar with his music, but he clearly had an enormous impact. I just thought that it was interesting that both father and son could leave behind such a large legacy in their respective endeavors.

fogbeak
0 replies
21h11m

If you're interested, Steve (Albini) goes into detail about his father and his contributions to wildfire science during an interview on the Marc Maron podcast. It's fascinating listening.

TheCleric
2 replies
1d1h

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.

https://www.earwolf.com/episode/dave-grohl-krist-novoselic-a...

e40
0 replies
23h29m

Never used bsky much since I couldn't find anyone interesting. Had I known about him, I might have used it more... rip.

tialaramex
1 replies
23h21m

I knew (of) him first and best for the essay "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked" (aka "The problem with music") which I was introduced to at about the point in my life where some friends are in bands and a few of them try to go commercial, but fortunately these particular friends had all read The Manual† and this essay by Albini.

† https://www.amazon.co.uk/MANUAL-How-Have-Number-Easy/dp/1899...

selimthegrim
0 replies
17h47m

I remembered the essay but only now connected it with the author.

thought_alarm
1 replies
1d1h

This news hits like a ton of bricks.

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.

mistrial9
0 replies
1d

that is a ripe old age for rockers.. many souls did not make it past 35

snorkel
1 replies
23h0m

Way too soon! He recently did an interview with Dave and Krist from Nirvana about the 30th anniversary of In Utero. They described recording prank phone calls during the recording sessions.

flyinghamster
0 replies
22h44m

I've never really paid all that much attention to producers, but 61, it still hits too close to home. I'm not that far behind. It kind of freaks me out that I'm hitting 60 soon.

rightisleft
1 replies
1d1h

very sad... he had his hands on so much good noise that i absolutely cherished. We'll be lucky if I don't bust out crying

pimlottc
0 replies
21h59m

Can't read it, sign-in required.

fallinditch
1 replies
23h57m

I became aware of Steve Albini via the PJ Harvey album Rid Of Me - for me this is the most impressive result of his visceral sound, that elevated the emotional rawness of the music perfectly. Currently revisiting another fave he engineered: Seamonsters by The Wedding Present.

droptablemain
0 replies
23h44m

Try Nina Nastasia's 2001 album Dogs.

You can feel yourself inside that big ol' room at Electric Audio in Chicago.

zonovar
0 replies
1d1h

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... :(

vr46
0 replies
1d

Damn. Glad I got to see Shellac at Primavera a few years ago. What a career. RIP.

thr0waway001
0 replies
1d

Crazy to think all the GenX icons are way up there in age.

telcal
0 replies
16h10m

What could be better than this?

"Shellac agreed to play in my parents' living room in 1993 because I sent them a fax." - Jon Solomon https://www.instagram.com/p/C6t2pvCvhpx/

Jon Solomon is a super DJ who among other things has hosted an annual 25 hour long "Holiday Radio Show" on WPRB over Christmas for the past 35(!) years! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Solomon

spudlyo
0 replies
1d1h

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.

soulofmischief
0 replies
21h27m

Rest in peace, a true legend and genius with unparalleled sensibilities.

slamonjam
0 replies
23h53m

Very sad news. I've been blasting "Rid of Me" the past few weeks, one of these records that just makes me want to crank up the volume.

rurban
0 replies
12h16m

I was looking back in time over his catalog of 194 produced records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_produced_by_St...

and boy, there were the hidden masterpieces: Electrelane's Power Out and Axes! Pixies Surfer Rosa, PJ Harvey Rid Of Me (though seriously misproduced), Slint Tweez, Breeders Pod, 4 Scout Niblett albums.

relaxing
0 replies
23h4m

Alongside “paid like a plumber” and “already this fucked”, I would like to see added the following wisdom:

I think of music as something that I'm willing to work 40 hours a week or more to support, like a wife and family, right? Music to me is that important. It's so important that I don't expect it to make a living for me. I expect that I will have to work a normal, regular job like a regular person in order to have the luxury of being able to play music.

He goes on to say this allows him to create without pressure or resentment, only pure joy.

https://www.tumblr.com/machinery/44307870770/the-other-bands...

rchaud
0 replies
1d1h

Only 61 years old! Stunning to think that he was mixing some of alternative rock's most influential releases 30-35 years ago.

prpl
0 replies
17h47m

Before hacker news, for me, there was the electrical audio forums. It was probably one of the most interesting places on the internet, and of course Steve with his hat avatar was a big part of that.

pimeys
0 replies
22h45m

Almost four hours long podcast with Steve Albini. I listened it in two parts, super interesting stuff.

https://youtu.be/QKEtP3s1FLw

Also others from that podcast are interesting if music production is somehow close to heart.

R.I.P.

nwsm
0 replies
1d

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.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BeHekAjVm72b9Sc9FlCtu?si=6...

nemo44x
0 replies
1d

He had strong opinions regarding politics, art, and business and you may strongly disagree with him (or not, or maybe on some things) but he was never a hypocrite. He took his convictions to the grave.

marpstar
0 replies
17h10m

Total legend. I never got the chance to interact with him, but I played with a couple of midwest USA bands/musicians who had. Each of them had a different story and perception of him, but everyone agreed he was a kick-ass dude.

For me, much like him, the production side of things was always just as, if not more, alluring as the writing and performing and his no-bullshit approach was a big factor in helping me believe that you could "hack" your way into creating an album with the equipment we already had.

RIP

klasko
0 replies
1d1h

I randomly bumped into him in a bar last year and the guy had an aura that distinguished him from everyone else in the place. Sad.

jaydestro
0 replies
22h31m

Shellac of North America - Wingwalker.

Time was, I could move my arms like a bird Fly!

She was a wingwalker Pitgirl of the sky

[Verse] And now I got an engine A big perverted engine It runs on strength of will Who could deny me the right to fly? You know, it's my art When I form my body in the shape of a plane...

[Chorus] I'm a plane! I'm a plane! I'm a plane! I'm a plane!

[Verse] Now I got an airframe A big perverted airframe You know, It's my art When I disguise my body in the shape of a plane [Chorus] I'm a plane! (I'm a plane!) I'm a plane! (I'm a plane!) I'm a plane! (I'm a plane!) I'm a plane! (I'm a plane!)

[Outro]

(Look at me, look at me - I'm a plane! Look at me, I'm a plane! Look at me!)

And the plane becomes a metaphor for my life And as I suffer for it Like I'm insane, as it says... So she suffers under the weight of my plane You know? It's my art! When I disguise my body in the shape of a plane...

Plane! (Plane!)

RIP Steve.

istultus
0 replies
20h28m

Just finished another boring run and asked myself "Why do I do this again?" then saw the news - dead at 61 due to heart attack. RIP. Scheduling my next boring run.

hank808
0 replies
22h41m

Damn!!!

gmarx
0 replies
1d

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

ggm
0 replies
12h57m

Being hardcore about wearing a uniform by choice is one of those 'I could, and arguably even I should, because it would remove unnecessary choice problems from my life' -But the thing is the people who dive into normcore and buy a wardrobe once of the identi-kit tee and trousers wind up being Steve Jobs fans and nothing, nothing kills the feel more than somebody who is obsessed with Jobs, unless its somebody obsessed with Elon Musk.

I think because he actually was a working creative, this side of Albini's character is less important to the story, but its a side I do reflect on: If I ditched 88% of my wardrobe, I might well be happier. The problem is I have bits of several distinct uniform choices I could select from to be "the one" and I am unsure I am ready to face that decision-battle. He obviously was. I live in tech conference tee shirts which tend to black. They are over-logofied.

(Australian's can elect to wear a particularly odd front-zip or front-popper sleeveless boiler-suit made by Hard Yakka, which I did briefly. I have shy kidneys and peeing standing up is agonisingly slow for me, so I wound up getting tired of the constant bathroom striptease. But that said, I did like them.

https://www.workweardirect.online/collections/hard-yakka/pro...)

For a while in York I wore an ex-USAF flight suit, the one without all the strings for G forces. It was fine but being high-artificial-fibre content, it simply stank. Cotton is better.

geoffeg
0 replies
1d

I wonder if any other musician has had as big an impact on the music I listen to as Steve Albini did. A huge and sudden loss.

doublepg23
0 replies
1d1h

Echoing the same sentiments in the thread, hard to overstate his influence on the music I've enjoyed. Rest in peace.

danieldk
0 replies
23h30m

Oh man, something I didn't expect at all. They seemed to be doing well with the new Shellac album and all. He is hugely influential and his engineering is uniquely Albini, which is uniquely the bands themselves in their rawest form. I am really happy to have seen Shellac live in 2009.

If somebody is looking for deep cuts - there is a recording of Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker by Albini (though it didn't make it to disc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXN_EmhkQSM

damnesian
0 replies
23h33m

That's way too fucking young.

cmrdporcupine
0 replies
1d

Aw man, that's awful.

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.

bluesounddirect
0 replies
16h22m

1000hz was an amazing work of art . Steve’s work will be missed . I always hated how I would hear “ Steve Albini made Nirvana what it was” . That’s such an insult to all of the other bands he worked on . Nirvana sucks and will always be a crappy band .

bjw4
0 replies
20h32m

Sad to hear Steve has passed.

I met Steve, Bob and Todd at Camber Sands 2001 very briefly, really nice people who didn't act like rockstars at all. Q&A sessions, banter with hecklers, Todd talked about his dog (an Italian Greyhound) a bit.

Friends band recorded at EA, only possible due to charging a low flat fee and no royalties based on who they were - incredible work ethic that has influenced me greatly.

Listening to "Terraform" tonight, and maybe Spiderland by Slint after.

alangibson
0 replies
23h35m

Sucks to hear.

It's worth noting that he didn't consider himself a producer. He always said he was a recording engineer.

SkipperCat
0 replies
23h22m

KEXP (kexp.org) radio is playing a lot of his catalog right now. Listen in if you want to hear the impact of his work.

Lammy
0 replies
1d

Awful news. I will spin Songs About Fucking while eating a fresh roast beef sandwich today in his honor.

Kye
0 replies
1d1h

He was a guy who had absolutely mastered the art of the post. Will be missed on and probably in multiple dimensions.

GoofballJones
0 replies
22h50m

And we just saw him in the last few months in a bunch of podcasts talking about the anniversary of In Utero. Sad news.

EMCymatics
0 replies
22h44m

This is devastating. One of the best there ever was.

BoingBoomTschak
0 replies
1d

Another quote from the music industry's Diogenes: "Pop music is for children and idiots".