Profile of Steve Albini on Famous Like Me

Steve Albini (born July 22, 1962, Missoula, Montana) is an influential singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a former member of the bands Big Black and Rapeman, and is current member of Shellac. He is founder and owner of the company Electrical Audio, which operates two recording studios in Chicago.

He is currently most active as what is mostly known in the music industry as a record producer, but he dislikes the term and prefers to be credited as recording engineer (if the record company insists on any credit at all; Albini is comfortable with receiving no credit). Contrary to common practice, Albini does not recieve royalties for anything he records or mixes: he charges a flat hourly fee. Albini estimates that he has engineered the recording of over 1,000 albums.

In Albini's opinion, putting producers in charge of recording sessions often destroys records, while the role of the recording engineer is to solve problems in capturing the sound of the musicians, not to threaten the artists' control over their product. In 2004, Albini summarized his opinions regarding record producers: "It always offended me when I was in the studio and the engineer or the assumed producer for the session would start bossing the band around. That always seemed like a horrible insult to me. The band was paying money for the privilege of being in a recording studio, and normally when you pay for something, you get to say how it's done. So, I made up my mind when I started engineering professionally that I wasn't going to behave like that."

His guitar playing has been just as influential on the sound of rock music as his sound engineering. With Shellac, Albini showcases his abrasive vocabulary of clanging, scraping metallic sounds, achieved partly by using custom-made sheet metal plectra. As a lyricist, Albini demonstrates an interest in the seamier side of life, writing lyrics describing inter-personal injustice, dehumanization and personal crises, often written from the perspective of a central character.

Additionally, he is famous (or notorious) in the indie world as an opinionated pundit on the music industry and trends in indie music, starting from his earliest writing for 'zines such as Matter and Forced Exposure, to his commentary on the poor ethics of big record labels, and how their practices filter through to the independent labels. He has been a strong supporter of labels who have tried to break the mold, especially Touch and Go Records, with whom all of his bands have released recordings.

His playing style in the 1980's was often compared to that of Greg Ginn, lead guitarist of Black Flag.

In addition to his music and recording expertise, Albini is a huge baseball fan who is a supporter of the Chicago White Sox having previously rooted for the Minnesota Twins.

Engineering anecdotes

See List of Steve Albini's recording projects for a chronological list of very many of Albini's recording work

The albums Albini records often bear his distinctive sonic signature. In Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad describes Albini's work on The Pixies' Surfer Rosa, but the description applies to many of Albini's efforts: "The recordings were both very basic and very exacting: Albini used few special effects; got an aggressive, often violent guitar sound; and made sure the rhythm section slammed as one." (Azerrad, 344) Another Albini trademark is his habit of generally keeping vocals "low in the mix," or much less prominent than is usual in rock music.

On Nirvana's In Utero is another typical example of Albini's recording practices: rather than recording each instrument to a separate track in the manner common in recording popular music, Albini used many microphones of different sensitivities positioned around the room as the band played together. He has an extraordinary knowledge of the great variety of microphones available for recording, and how to use them to best record live in the studio.

To this end, Albini prefers to avoid overdubbing.

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