Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered audio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative rock music in the 1980s, the ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies and hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.
The cause was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the studio in Chicago that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.
With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded, and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was one of rock’s most acerbic wits. He was also a withering critic of the exploitive extremes of the major-label music business, describing in a widely-quoted 1993 article, “The Problem With Music,” the ways that naïve bands are lured into major deals with labels that, in most cases, leave them broke and in debt.
When I was about to go into high school I wanted to learn about cool music that wasn’t just the classic rock my dad was into or top 40 pop music. I knew Pixies were cool because Kurt Cobain said they were cool and I liked Fight Club so I downloaded a copy of Surfer Rosa. That shit changed my life. It was so foundational to my tastes and opened up a whole world of independent music to me. Cloud Nothing’s Attack on Memory was a big deal for me too… I’m gonna miss the dude. Thanks Albini, you made some cool music.