Steve Albini was the type of musician who delighted in wiping the floor with the adoring fans in front of him. When his band, Shellac, played at the Mandalay Ballroom in Auckland in 2001, they smeared the crowd across the floor, walls and ceiling. The sonic assault was confronting and thrilling, all in one.
But the cult-hero status of Albini, who died on May 7 of a heart attack aged 61, was as much earned for his work recording other acts and the raw, no-frills aesthetic he brought to the studio as it was for his own music.
Prominent albums that got the Albini treatment included Nirvana’s swansong, In Utero, the Pixies’ debut, Surfer Rosa, PJ Harvey’s sophomore, Rid of Me, and even Walking into Clarksdale, the one-off 1998 studio reunion of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. He also had repeat clients in Low, The Dirty Three, The Breeders and The Jesus Lizard, and after his profile rose in the 1990s, continued to record dozens of underground acts, among them NZ bands. Dunedin trio Die! Die! Die!, then a riotous outfit right up Albini’s musical alley, recorded their 2005 self-titled debut album with him.
Band frontman Andrew Wilson paid tribute on social media: “Man, this hurts. Steve recorded our first album, which changed our lives … at the end, Steve said, ‘Gentlemen, it was as good as it was ever going to be.’ That stuck with me.” A few years earlier, Kiwi noise-rock outfit HDU – who opened for Shellac on that 2001 NZ tour – recorded their third album, Fire Works, at Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.
For this writer, hearing Big Black, the influential punk band Albini formed in 1981, for the first time was exciting and unnerving. Sonic Youth’s Silver Rocket and Hüsker Dü's New Day Rising had a similar effect, but Big Black was far more menacing.
Walking into The Entertainers record shop in New Plymouth in the late 80s, seeing the bright green cover of Big Black’s Songs About Fucking, with its almost X-rated artwork, was a formative musical moment.
Much to my parents’ disdain, that record got hammered, and is probably one of the reasons they were relieved when I left home. Albini’s influence helped steer me, and many of my mates, towards music that conjured up a deliciously discordant racket. Big Black’s songs were volatile, with instruments slugging it out to create a caustic noise, yet there was a catchiness and hammering groove to Kerosene, L Dopa and Bad Penny that made you want to dance. Songs like the harrowing six-minute epic Kerosene felt riveted together, as if they were about to fall apart. It was scorching, abrasive and made you feel bulletproof.
Shellac, for much of their tenure, produced pure rock’n’roll you could dance to, like the swinging Dog and Pony Show from 1994′s classic debut album, At Action Park.
Albini was uncompromising, musically and personality wise. He shunned mainstream music and the industry behind it, and his provocative views were polarising. Naming his second band Rapeman (the title taken from a Japanese comic book) did him no favours, and he would later describe the name as “unconscionable”.
Yet, his relentless work ethic and time spent producing and engineering music for often little-known fringe bands and artists that he loved is a key part of his legacy. He won admiration for charging a flat fee (“I would like to be paid like a plumber”) and refusing royalties from his recording work for other artists, because he considered it unethical.
But his fearless and singular approach to music came to life best through the songs of Big Black and Shellac, who returned to New Zealand in 2015. The band was due to release its first album in a decade this month.
As a friend said, wherever Albini has gone, they’ll definitely know he’s arrived.
Scott Kara is a former editor of Rip It Up and entertainment writer for the NZ Herald, now working in public relations.
