Indie music icon and Nirvana engineer Steve Albini dead aged 61
American indie rock icon and music producer Steve Albini has died. He was 61.
Rolling Stone reported the star died on Tuesday from a heart attack as confirmed by Taylor Hales, a staff member at Albini’s Electronic Audio recording studio in Chicago.
Albini was best known as the frontman of Big Black and Shellac and for his work as a producer and sound engineer for Nirvana, The Pixies, and other legendary music acts.
Music great Steve Albini has died aged 61.
The music great first broke onto the scene in the ’80s with the music trio Big Black before forming his own band Shellac in the ’90s.
Albini stepped into the role of producer in 1988 for alternative rock band The Pixies.
The indie icon worked on the band’s acclaimed debut album Surfer Rosa.
Albini’s work with The Pixies led him to be sought out by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
Cobain recruited the sound engineer to work with the band on their third and final album In Utero in 1993, which included tracks Heart-Shaped Box and Serve the Servants.
Albini worked with Nirvana in 1993.
In the same year, Albini worked as a producer on English singer PJ Harvey’s second studio album Rid of Me.
The music icon’s death comes just one week before his band Shellac is set to release their sixth studio album To All Trains next week – their first since 2014.
The rock band had also announced a tour for their upcoming album later this year.
Tributes have already begun to flood in for the late indie legend on social media.
Rock band Cloud Nothings, who worked with Albini on their album Attack on Memory in 2012 remembered the producer as “a genuine, singular, principled person”.
steve touched countless lives and changed mine and many others for the better. a genuine, singular, principled person. spent the last 40 years helping people make art. there's no reason for him to be gone and the world is less interesting without him. just a really sad day.
— Cloud Nothings (@cloudnothings) May 8, 2024
“Spent the last 40 years helping people make art. there’s no reason for him to be gone and the world is less interesting without him. just a really sad day,” they wrote to X (formerly Twitter).
Singer Lee Spielman reminisced on his time working with Albini for his band Trash Talk.
“The Trash Talk S/T LP was a very raw time for us as a band. You welcomed us in with open arms for that session. I’ll never forget that week,” he wrote to X.
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