Steve Albini Informations

Steven Albini (pronounced /ælˈbiːni/; born July 22, 1961) is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago. In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums during his career.

Albini is also known for his outspoken views on the music industry, having stated repeatedly that it financially exploits artists and homogenizes their sound. Nearly alone among well-known producers, Albini refuses to take ongoing royalties from album sales, feeling that a producer's job is to record the music to the band's desires, and that paying a producer as if they had contributed artistically to an album is unethical.

Albini was born in Pasadena, California, to Gina (née Martinelli) and Frank Addison Albini. His father is a wildlife researcher. He has two siblings. In his youth, Albini's family moved often, before settling in the college town of Missoula, Montana in 1974. Albini is Italian American and part of his family comes from the Piedmont region of Northern Italy.

While recovering from a broken leg, Albini began playing bass guitar and participated in bass lessons in high school for one week. Albini was exposed to the Ramones first album by a schoolmate on a field trip when he was 14 or 15. He felt it was the best music he had ever heard and subsequently bought every Ramones recording available to him. He subsequently said anything he ever done n his music career can be traced back to hearing that first Ramones album.

Growing up in Montana, he became a fan of bands such as The Stooges, the Ramones, Television, Suicide, Wire, The Fall, The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle, Kraftwerk, The Birthday Party, Pere Ubu, Public Image Ltd, Rudimentary Peni, and Killing Joke.

After graduating from Hellgate High School, Albini moved to Evanston, Illinois, to attend college at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (NU), where he attained a degree in Journalism. Albini said he studied painting in college with the late Ed Paschke, someone he calls a brilliant educator and "one of the only people in college who actually taught me anything."

In the Chicago area, Albini was active as a writer in local zines such as Matter and Forced Exposure, covering the then-nascent punk rock scene, and gained a reputation for the iconoclastic nature of his articles. Around the same time, he began recording musicians and engineered his first album in 1981. He co-managed Ruthless Records (Chicago) with John Kezdy of The Effigies and Jon Babbin (Criminal IQ Records). According to Albini, he maintained a "straight job" for five years until 1987, working in a photography studio as a photograph retouch artist.

During his teenage years, Albini played in bands such as the Montana punk band "Just Ducky", a Chicago band called "Small Irregular Pieces of Aluminum", "Stations", and another band that record label Touch and Go/Quarterstick Records explained "he [Albini] is paying us not to mention."

Albini played for Flour c. 1988.

In 1981, Albini formed Big Black while he was a student at NU, and recorded Lungs, the band's debut EP, on Ruthless Records (Chicago), a label he co-managed with Jon Babbin (Criminal IQ Records) and John Kezdy (The Effigies). Albini played all of the instruments on Lungs except the saxophone, played by friend John Bohnen. The Bulldozer (1983) EP was then released on both Ruthless and Fever Records.

Jeff Pezzati and Santiago Durango, of Chicago band Naked Raygun, and live drummer Pat Byrne joined shortly thereafter, and the band—along with a drum machine credited as "Roland"—released the EP Racer-X in 1984, after touring and signing a new contract with the Homestead Records business. Pezzati commenced recording the "Il Duce" 7-inch single with the band, but returned to his original band before it was completed. Pezzati was replaced on bass by Dave Riley, with whom the group recorded their debut full-length album, Atomizer (1986). The "Il Duce" recording was eventually finished with Riley as bassist; the band also released The Hammer Party album while signed to Homestead, which was a compilation of the Lungs and Bulldozer EPs.

Big Black left the Homestead label for Touch and Go Records in late 1985/early 1986, and recorded the Headache EP and the 7-inch single, Heartbeat between June and August 1986—both were released the following year. Also in 1986, a live album titled Sound of Impact was released on the Not/Blast First label. The accompanying booklet provides insight into the band's influences; Albini cited bands such as Ramones, The Birthday Party, The Stooges, SPK, Minor Threat, Whitehouse, Link Wray, Pere Ubu, Chrome, Rudimentary Peni, The 4-Skins, Throbbing Gristle, Skrewdriver, the Ex, Minimal Man, U.S. Chaos, Gang Green, Tommi Stumpff, Swans and Bad Brains.

In 1987, the band released their second studio album Songs About Fucking as well as the He's a Whore / The Model 7-inch single, both on Touch and Go. Big Black disbanded shortly after a period of extensive touring that year in support of Songs About Fucking. Durango enrolled in law school and was successful in becoming a practicing lawyer.

Touch and Go released a Big Black live album and video, Pigpile, in 1992; this consisted mostly of recordings from the band's final tour in 1987. Pigpile was also released in Japan, Australia and Germany. Touch and Go stated on its website in May 2014: "Someday, we might release the video on DVD. Until then, please don't ask us about it."

Albini went on to form the controversially named Rapeman in 1987—the band consisted of Albini (vocals, guitar), Rey Washam (drums), and David Wm. Sims. The band was named after a popular Japanese comic book that garnered Albini and Washam's interests. They broke up after the release of two 7-inch singles—"Hated Chinee b/w Marmoset" (1988) and "Inki's Butt Crack b/w Song Number One" (1989), one EP titled Budd (1988) and the Two Nuns and a Pack Mule album, also released in 1988 on Touch and Go.

Albini formed Shellac in 1992, with bandmates Bob Weston (formerly of Volcano Suns) and Todd Trainer (of Rifle Sport, Breaking Circus and Brick Layer Cake). They initially released three EPs: The Rude Gesture: A Pictorial History (1993), Uranus (1993) and The Bird Is the Most Popular Finger (1994). The first two EP releases were on Touch and Go, while the third EP was a Drag City label release.

Two years after formation, the Japanese label NUX Organization released a Japan-exclusive live album in CD format titled ライヴイン東京—an English-language reference to the name Shellac cannot be found anywhere on the CD product, which was not available outside Japan. The live album was followed by five studio albums: At Action Park (1994), Terraform (1998), 1000 Hurts (2000), Excellent Italian Greyhound (2007) and Dude Incredible (2014). All of Shellac's studio albums were released on vinyl as well as CD.

Albini explained in 2010 that Shellac had made a decision early in their existence that they would not play at festivals and this position was articulated to All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) festival organizer Barry Hogan during the preparation stage of the inaugural ATP event. However, Scottish band Mogwai managed to convince Albini at the time that they were ATP curators and the band was very impressed by the experience: "They (ATP) completely changed the festival game. Now the whole world has to operate under the knowledge that there are these cool, curated festivals where everyone is treated well and the experience is a generally pleasant one."

Since the early 1990s, Albini has been best known as a record producer; however, he dislikes the term and prefers to receive no credit on album sleeves or notes. When credited, he prefers the term "recording engineer."

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