‘He helped put Chicago on the map,’ says Metro owner Joe Shanahan.
As a musician, sound engineer and provocateur, Steve Albini was a dominant force across Chicago’s musical landscape for more than 40 years.
His influence as a recording engineer and punk sage spanned genres and all levels of the recording industry. He worked on more than 2,000 albums in his lifetime. Many of those were among the most important bands of his generation, from America’s punk underground — with bands such as Slint, Silkworm, Jawbreaker, Pegboy, Tar and the Jesus Lizard — to mainstream stars like Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Cheap Trick, Bush and the Pixies.
In 1997 he opened Electrical Audio, a two-story recording studio in Avondale that became his homebase. He also was a prolific musician who played in a series of bands — Rapeman, Big Black and Shellac.
“Since the late ‘80s until yesterday, Steve was one of, if not the sole torchbearer of integrity in independent music in Chicago and the world. There is no ‘Chicago sound’ without Steve,” said Ed Roche, former label manager with Touch and Go Records, the Chicago label that issued the majority of Albini’s personal recording projects.
Albini “inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of kids to pick up an instrument, try to sing, engineer and enter business ethically,” Roche said.
