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The Shellacs
Shellac’s first new album in nearly a decade, “To All Trains,” comes out next week, May 17. At the time of his death, Albini’s band was preparing to tour this new recording.
Protagonist of the American underground scene
Known to the general public for having produced Nirvana’s third album, “In Utero” in 1993, Albini was a true icon of American underground music: the man behind the recording of musical giants such as “Surfer Rosa” by the Pixies, “Pod of the Breeders”, “Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey, but also a sound, an approach to recording that has worked with dozens of bands that have marked the alternative history of more or less extreme American rock, from Slint, to Jesus Lizard, passing through Superchunk and Neurosis.
The carreer
Albini was born in California in 1962 to emigrant parents from Turin and grew up in Montana: his encounter with the Chicago punk scene when he was a student at Northwestern University led him to form his first band, Big Black, where his abrasive and discordant guitars (which would become Albini’s trademark) is combined with the industrial martiality of a drum machine, marrying noise and post-hardcore.
Once the fertile experience of Big Black was over, Albini founded Rapemen, and then gave life, at the beginning of the 90s, to Shellac, the culmination of his research into noise and alternative rock. The band, still active after the death of its leader, will release its new work “To All Trains” next week, its first in the last ten years. Icon of the underground and inspiration of musicians globally, irreverent and critical towards the music industry, Albini has left his mark on rock music by creating a true recording philosophy and a unique, aggressive, overbearing and dissonant style that he has become over the years a real trademark.
“Recorded by Steve Albini”
Albini always rejected the term “producer”, even though that was probably what he did on many recordings, and refused to take royalties from albums he worked on, a common financial bonus for most producers. However, he insisted on asking that the credit “Recorded by Steve Albini” appear in all of his works.
