Steve Albini : Requiscat
Steve Albini has passed away aged 61.
I’m beyond gutted & literally destroyed, by the passing of one of my only idols, the masterful “engineer/producer”, musician & punk/indie main char Steve Albini. If you are wondering who he is, he’s the guitarist for Shellac and Big Black, and he’s one of the most important personnel behind most alternative rock in the last couple of decades.
In 2004, Albini estimated that he engineered the recording of 1,500 albums, mostly by underground musicians. By 2018, his estimate had increased to several thousand. Artists that Albini worked with include Nirvana, Pixies, The Breeders, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, the Jesus Lizard, Don Caballero, PJ Harvey, the Wedding Present, Joanna Newsom, Superchunk, Low, Dirty Three, Jawbreaker, Neurosis, Cloud Nothings, Bush, Chevelle, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (as Page and Plant), Helmet, Fred Schneider, the Stooges, Owls, Manic Street Preachers, Jarvis Cocker, the Cribs, the Fleshtones, Nina Nastasia, the Frames, the Membranes, Cheap Trick, Motorpsycho, Slint, mclusky etc.
Although genuinely being a non-compromising good guy, a champion of the small bands, one of the most vocal people against the music industry and it’s commodification of music, an idealist whose work ethic has been widely documented; It’s a shame the discourse over his life is being taken over by the PC cabal, over some of his “comments in the past”, or “his edgelord/non-compromising stuff” which he has apologized over and came to terms with in the last couple of years.
The problem with this is, everybody does / says at least one stupid thing in their youth, be it to chase clout or act edgy or shock society. These people with their pitchforks are today’s Christians who believed that Satanism was a real threat for society in the 80’s, lyrics in gangsta rap are real, punk was going to bring down monarchy, whatever & have been slapping PMRC labels on music to “protect” kids. These are the descendants of the religious literalists who flock to all online discourse in terms of scoring an ethical one-up, so that they feel they are superior. This is a very slippery slope, it’s OK to be vigilant about your idols, sure. But this is exactly a facet of the online culture wars, which everyone sane now kind of understands is extremely toxic, and is weaponized distraction against real political problems in life, like climate change, income inequality, housing crisis, wars around the world etc.
I just wanted to get together some of the obituaries and bits and pieces I’ve read over the weekend together, as a final testament. RIP Steve Albini, you’ll always be the GOAT.
PS: I’d also like to state that I sometimes mocked myself that I felt like a Shellac cult member (like a Dead-head) as it’s by and far my most watched band. However I will always cherish the first post-pandemic Shellac show I watched in Primavera 2 years ago - where they have been the house band for some reason since 2006, despite categorically not playing festivals.-
It had felt like a beautiful reunion with these aging punks/rockers & their kids, whom somehow always chose to watch Shellac over who else was playing on the other stages, even if they’d watched them countless times.. I was looking forward to another edition by the end of this month, and it was one of my most cherished moments spent on earth. I simply can’t comprehend that I will not be able to attend another Shellac show, ever!
+ I Hope I Leave A Mountain Of Shit Unfinished: Obituary in The Quietus
This is the main obit, and if you are going to read one thing, make it this one, as it’s all encompassing.
Albini had a lot of time not just for journalists but basically anyone besides your standard bigots and other assorted plonkers. He cared about stuff. He was generous. He led by example. As his stance on not accepting royalties for his recording engineering work demonstrated, he was not motivated by the idea of amassing money. Had he wanted to, he could have been a much richer man, but he chose not to be, and not many people would make that decision. He was also a man with a moral compass in an environment populated by unscrupulous characters from Succession. His instinct veered towards collaboration rather than competition. He was a man of principle but also humility and self-deprecation, who was happy to hold his hands up if he thought he'd got something wrong. He responded to the most banal of email enquiries as if he were not one of the most highly regarded recording engineers of all time. He was an absolute joy to interview. "I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning," he once explained to Stewart Lee for The Sunday Times. "I'd rather not look at a coward or someone who was exploiting people." This quote gets to the heart of who Steve Albini was, why he was so widely admired, and maybe even who we all should aspire to be, in an ideal world.
on his edgelord shit:
As a young man, Albini seemed determined to shock and offend. Like Burroughs, Smith (Mark E. and Patti), Lennon, O’Connor, and many others, for example, he used the harshest of racial slurs in instances of savage satire that were far too close to unacceptable bigotry in the eyes of many. In his own mind he felt there were a number of points being made but these were points that could only have been made by a relatively cosseted white man, something he realised and owned later in life. In an age of unapologetic rage, it was interesting and gratifying to watch Albini as a man in progress. Rather than doubling down, or regretting any gaffes, he owned and accepted them as part of his journey. As he told Mel Magazine: “I’m overdue for a discussion about my role in inspiring ‘edgelord’ shit.”
+ Philip Sherbourne’s newsletter on Shellac & Big Black.
In 1993, I also stumbled upon Shellac’s first few seven-inches, and shortly thereafter their debut album, which turned my brain inside out a few times in quick succession. I was steeped in lots of heavy, ugly music in those years, but I’d never heard anything with quite the same lacerating intensity as Albini’s guitars on that record, not to say the production itself, with its claustrophobic room tone and krautrock-on-Adderal grooves; the whole thing felt as volatile and dangerous as a weasel in a shoebox—barely contained, ready to take your head off at any moment.
+ Interview on Mel Magazine : where he has talked about his previous “edgelord era”
I admit that I was deaf to a lot of women’s issues at the time, and that’s on me. Within our circles, within the music scene, within the musical underground, a lot of cultural problems were deemed already solved — meaning, you didn’t care if your friends were queer. Of course women had an equal place, an equal role to play in our circles. The music scene was broadly inclusive. So for us, we felt like those problems had been solved. And that was an ignorant perception.
That’s the way a lot of straight white guys think of the world — they think that it requires an active hatred on your part to be prejudiced, bigoted or to be a participant in white supremacy. The notion is that if you’re not actively doing something to oppress somebody, then you’re not part of the problem. As opposed to quietly enjoying all of the privilege that’s been bestowed on you by generations of this dominance.
That was the fundamental failure of my perception. It’s been a process of enlightenment for me to realize and accept that my very status as a white guy in America is the product of institutional prejudices, that I’ve enjoyed the benefits of them, passively and actively.
— On White House’s Peter Sotos:
The main thing that I was reacting against was an impulse that I saw in my peers to soften their art and their music so that it would be acceptable within the existing conventions of art and music. What I wanted to do was make music and art that was for its own sake, entirely, and irrespective of what other people had to say about it. It was a reactionary impulse on my part. The music and art that had meant the most to me had always been music and art that had existed for its own sake.
— Obituary in Slate: On his engineering/productions:
Although the music he made himself was as unsparing as his reputation—To All Trains, the first album in 10 years by his trio Shellac, is due out next week—Albini’s minimalism was never the whole story. Listen, for example, to Joanna Newsom’s Ys, whose lush orchestrations feel even livelier because of the way his recording gives each instrument room to breathe. But I keep coming back to those drums. On PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, you can hear the way the sound of the snares travels through space, not just keeping the beat but describing a universe you’re invited to inhabit. Most contemporary recordings are so compressed and optimized they might as well have been recorded in orbit around a distant planet, but with Albini’s, you’re right in the room, experiencing the music in the instant it comes into existence. In that moment, there’s nothing better.
— His previous fanzine blurbs, where he was obscenely witty to get his point across. via (Matt Jencik/Reckless )
+ Will Oldham on Steve Albini: ‘He elevated the quality of the human experience’ (The Guardian)
He was a human being who elevated the quality of the human experience. He expected more of himself and other people, but also knew it was possible. There was nothing outrageous. Just the idea of being able to continue to work within the music business and maintain such humanity, in the face of what almost everybody says: well, it’s impossible to do things right, because this is just the way you do things. For Steve: no, there’s not another way to do it besides doing it as right as you can do it.
Steve Albini Was Proof You Can Change: The Atlantic
Over the years, he’d become infamous for saying a tremendous number of insulting things about other people, including bands he’d worked with. (“Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings,” he once wrote about the Pixies.) He seemed terribly smart, and suspicious of any nonsense. This is a bit of a broad statement, but allow me to say it: Anyone who has spent time around people who are really into music has met the type of person who seems totally obstinate, and borderline caustic, about why the bands they like are better than the bands you like. These people can be pretty irritating—I don’t want to be yelled at just because I like some Taylor Swift songs—but they inspire a shard of dread that perhaps their obstinacy is justified, that they have latched onto some way of thinking about art that the rest of us are too dull to perceive.
From afar, Albini seemed like the final boss of this mindset.
+ His seminal text on The Baffler: The Problem with Music
One last headbang, in 4 days!
Requiscat in Pacem, Steve Albini!