Musician and Audio Engineer Steve Albini Dies of Heart Attack at 61

Steve Albini was famously critical of the direction in which club culture had steered electronic music.

Multi-instrumentalist, audio engineer, and outspoken provocateur Steve Albini has died at age 61. The cause of death was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales, an employee of Albini’s recording studio, Electrical Audio.

Albini’s first taste of the spotlight came courtesy of Big Black, the Chicago band he founded as frontman in 1981. He went on to form bands like Rapeman and Shellac, capable of playing every instrument for each if called to do so.

He started his career as an audio engineer in the early ’90s — and despite hating being referred to as a producer, Albini is best known today for contributions to albums such as Pixies‘ Surfer Rosa and Nirvana‘s In Utero. He opened Electrical Audio in 1997 and refused to collect royalties for any of the music on which he was credited as he considered the practice unethical.

Albini was almost as well known for his ascerbic social commentary. Having obtained a degree in journalism from Northwestern University, he wrote for punk zines like Matter and Forced Exposure around the same time he formed Big Black.

Not even in recent years did Albini’s subversive attitude subside. In 2015, he famously railed against dance culture’s influence on electronic music in a reply to UK DJ and producer Powell, who asked Albini for permission to use a sample.

“The electronic music I liked was radical and different, s*** like the White Noise, Xenakis, Suicide, Kraftwerk, and the earliest stuff from Cabret Voltaire, SPK and DAF,” reads Albini’s email (which Powell plastered across a billboard in London to promote his release). “When that scene and those people got co-opted by dance/club music I felt like we’d lost a war. I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth.”

We here at EDM Identity share our condolences with the friends, loved ones, and supporters of Steve Albini during what can only be a difficult time.