Steve Albini

Steve Albini (pronounced ; born July 22, 1962) is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer, and music journalist.

He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, Flour, and is part of Shellac.

He is the founder, owner, and the principal engineer at Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago.

In his youth, Albini's family moved often, before settling in the college town of Missoula, Montana in 1974.

Albini is Italian American and some of his family are 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.

He was introduced to the Ramones 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 bought every Ramones recording available to him, and credits his music career to hearing their first album.

He said, "I was baffled and thrilled by music like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Pere Ubu, Devo, and all those contemporaneous, inspirational punk bands without wanting to try to mimic them."

During his teenage years, Albini played in bands including the Montana punk band Just Ducky, the Chicago band 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".

After graduating from Hellgate High School, Albini moved to Evanston, Illinois to attend college at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he earned a degree in journalism.

He said that he studied painting in college with 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 including Matter and Forced Exposure, covering the then-nascent punk rock scene, and gained a reputation for the iconoclastic nature of his articles.

About 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).

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 Babbin and Kezdy.

Albini played all of the instruments on Lungs except the saxophone, played by his friend John Bohnen.

The Bulldozer (1983) EP was released on 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, the Roland TR-606, 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.

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.

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.

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, Suicide, 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.

According to Albini, he maintained a "straight job" for five years until 1987, working in a photography studio as a photograph retouch artist.

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 became a lawyer.

Albini formed Rapeman in 1987: the band consisted of Albini (vocals, guitar), Rey Washam (drums), and David Wm. Sims (bass).

Both Washam and Sims were previously members of Scratch Acid.

In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums over his career.

He has worked with acts such as Nirvana, Pixies, the Breeders, PJ Harvey, Gogol Bordello, and former Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

Albini is also known for his outspoken views on the music industry.

In his opinion it financially exploits artists and homogenizes their sound.

Nearly alone among well-known producers and musicians, Albini refuses to take ongoing royalties from other bands recording in his studio, feeling that a producer's job is to record the music to the band's desires, and that paying producers 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.

On his birth certificate, the middle name section says "(None)" as his father refused to leave it blank.

His father was a wildfire researcher.

He has two siblings.