Electric Wizards JR Moores · Reaktion, 2021

CHAPTER 13

Steve Albini: Heavy-Duty Engineer

The engineer who refused to be called a producer

27 works, in the order the book names them

  • 001/Album/1993

    In Utero

    Nirvana

    For Nirvana’s In Utero, Albini accepted a fee of $100,000 because that’s what they offered him to record it.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 002/Album/1991

    Nevermind

    Nirvana

    Albini says Geffen would have preferred Nirvana to have spent ‘six months and a million dollars’ on their follow-up to the global smash of Nevermind.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 003/Album/1988

    Surfer Rosa

    Pixies

    With imagery lifted from the spicier passages of the Bible, Surfer Rosa’s tales of seedy intercourse and bloody injuries were backed by a raw and ragged sound with an astute understanding of the emotive power of dynamics.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 004/Album

    Tweez

    Slint

    A few months earlier, when Albini had recorded Tweez for his friends Slint, that band felt it would be a neat idea to have no breaks between the songs.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 005/Album/1991

    Seamonsters

    The Wedding Present

    They hired Albini to record a couple of EPS, followed by The Wedding Present’s third full-length, Seamonsters (1991).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 006/Album

    Bizarro

    The Wedding Present

    When arranging how much studio time was required, Gedge mentioned his group’s previous album, Bizarro, had taken six weeks.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 007/Album/1993

    Rid of Me

    PJ Harvey

    He just sets it up and he’s very good at getting the right atmosphere to get the best take.’ Recorded with Albini, Harvey’s Rid of Me was released in 1993, the same year as Overkill’s I Hear Black, Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Annihilator’s Set the World on Fire.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 008/Album

    I Hear Black

    Overkill

    He just sets it up and he’s very good at getting the right atmosphere to get the best take.’ Recorded with Albini, Harvey’s Rid of Me was released in 1993, the same year as Overkill’s I Hear Black, Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Annihilator’s Set the World on Fire.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 009/Album

    Get a Grip

    Aerosmith

    He just sets it up and he’s very good at getting the right atmosphere to get the best take.’ Recorded with Albini, Harvey’s Rid of Me was released in 1993, the same year as Overkill’s I Hear Black, Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Annihilator’s Set the World on Fire.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 010/Album

    Set the World on Fire

    Annihilator

    He just sets it up and he’s very good at getting the right atmosphere to get the best take.’ Recorded with Albini, Harvey’s Rid of Me was released in 1993, the same year as Overkill’s I Hear Black, Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Annihilator’s Set the World on Fire.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 011/Album

    Spiderland

    Slint

    Harvey was a huge fan of of Slint’s 1991 album Spiderland.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 012/Album/2002

    Mclusky Do Dallas

    Mclusky

    His earlier band, the Cardiff-based trio Mclusky, recorded their second and third albums with Steve Albini: Mclusky Do Dallas (2002) and The Difference between Me and You Is that I’m Not On Fire (2004).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 013/Album/2004

    The Difference between Me and You Is that I’m Not On Fire

    Mclusky

    His earlier band, the Cardiff-based trio Mclusky, recorded their second and third albums with Steve Albini: Mclusky Do Dallas (2002) and The Difference between Me and You Is that I’m Not On Fire (2004).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 014/Book

    Harry Potter

    J. K. Rowling

    For his own part, Falkous rarely misses an opportunity to mock Corgan and Co., be it from the stage, in his interviews or in the lyrics to Future of the Left’s ‘Robocop 4 – Fuck Off Robocop’, in which the physical appearance of the Pumpkins’ frontman is compared to Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter franchise.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 015/Album

    Guidance

    Russian Circles

    When the instrumental rock band Russian Circles were promoting their 2016 album Guidance, produced by Converge’s Kurt Ballou, they were asked how Ballou’s approach differed from their previous experiences of working on two records with ‘the legendary Steve Albini’.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 016/Album

    Strange Peace

    METZ

    One insight into Albini’s working methods came courtesy of a feature on the Canadian noise rock trio METZ, whose 2017 album Strange Peace was recorded by Albini (rather unnecessarily, it has to be said, seeing as the self-production on that band’s two prior albums had been so proficient at replicating Albini’s signature traits in the first place).
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 017/EP

    Star Booty

    Bitch Magnet

    The post-hardcore group Bitch Magnet drew ire for listing Albini as ‘producer’ on their Star Booty EP when all he really did was ‘help three college bozos remix some sorry class-project recordings’.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 018/Album

    Parallel Lines

    Blondie

    His role as producer of Parallel Lines involved not just recording Blondie but coercing and manipulating them into playing ‘properly’ in a tighter and more professional sense, altering the lyrics to be less trashy and humorous and more ‘emotional’, persuading Debbie Harry that she should sing ‘in tune’, foregrounding melody at all costs, and making the band do take after take after take until they reached the high standards that Chapman believed, correctly, would get Blondie’s music aired on all the pop radio stations.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 019/Album

    Highway to Hell

    AC/DC

    Vanda and Young politely stepped back and a new producer, Robert Lange, was installed for the band’s sixth record, Highway to Hell.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 020/Album

    Hysteria

    Def Leppard

    Lange would later spend literally years working on Def Leppard’s Hysteria, recording everything separately and meticulously piecing it all together in steady stages, with a further five months taken up on mixing, so that in the end no hair was out of place.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 021/Album

    The Black Album

    Metallica

    They achieved this feat with 1990’s self-titled record, also known as The Black Album.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 022/Album/2003

    St Anger

    Metallica

    Producer Rock was still working with Metallica when the divisive St Anger was completed in 2003.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 023/Documentary

    Some Kind of Monster

    Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

    That album was, to a significant extent, overshadowed by its accompanying documentary, Some Kind of Monster, which cannot be viewed without the movie evoking unfortunate echoes of Spın̈al Tap (and Metallica deserve respect for even releasing it).
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 024/Album

    The Centre Cannot Hold

    Ben Frost

    See The Centre Cannot Hold by the principally electronic composer Ben Frost.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 025/Album

    George Best

    The Wedding Present

    Around the time they were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of 1987’s George Best, The Wedding Present decided to re-record the album in its entirety.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 026/Album

    In Color

    Cheap Trick

    Albini!’ U.S. rockers Cheap Trick did the same thing with the songs from In Color, originally made in 1977.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 027/Album

    Chocolate Synthesizer

    Boredoms

    Albini’s anti-corporate views may have come across as puritan in the 1990s when money was still sloshing around the music industry, certain independent labels like SST had gained a reputation for improper remuneration of their artists, and records as wonderfully bizarre as Boredoms’ Chocolate Synthesizer were released by majors as big as Warner Bros.
    Open in YouTube ↗