Steve Albini’s sudden passing on May 7, 2024, at the age of 61, leaves a giant, multi-genre legacy for fans to grapple with. His rock bands were legendarily loud and surly, including the edgelord value of Rapeman, the inimitable Big Black and the perfectly-named Shellac. His songs were defiant, distinguished, and often tongue-in-cheek as they decried aggressors and celebrated weirdos alike.
Beyond his contributions to noisy rock as a performer, Albini recorded, mixed and engineered records by bands ranging from the popular—Nirvana, Bush, The Pixies, The Breeders, Cheap Trick—to the everyman artist. It was his slavish devotion to those bands, the ones without Wikipedia entries or from small towns all over the world that longed for the time and attention of one of music’s best pair of ears—that set him apart from other producers.
Albini’s work spanned across various genres, including metal (Neurosis, Zao, High on Fire, KEN Mode), folk (Smog, Will Oldham, Nina Nastasia, Songs:Ohia), post-rock (MONO, Sonna, Mogwai), and experimental (Labradford, Electrelane, Dirty Three). It’s a discography that would make any indie rock fan hard-pressed not to find Albini’s fingerprints when looking through their musical past.
Though perceived as a surly, standoffish person who would not suffer foolishness, remembrances from those who actually knew Albini describe him as kind and generous (if curmudgeonly). Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan, who worked with Albini on several records for his band Superchunk, shared on social media that Albini “was not particularly interested in two things the music industry as a whole is obsessed with—credit and money.”
We celebrate Steve Albini’s giant music footprint with a non-exhaustive list of some of his best production and recording work—many of them celebrated but some well under the radar. Albini leaves a wealth of influence across the industry, a social media presence that irked more than a few folks and sounds that are as memorable as they are irreplaceable.