Steve Albini, renowned for decades as a distinctive underground musician and recording engineer, died Tuesday night of a heart attack. Staff at his Chicago recording studio, Electrical Audio, confirmed news of his death with NPR. Albini was 61 years old.
As a performer, he fronted Shellac and Big Black, two indie-rock bands that pushed punk and noise past absurd and abrasive limits. Albini famously did not like to be called a "producer," but he worked on — by his own estimate — "a couple thousand" albums as a recording engineer, including classics like the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, Nirvana's In Utero and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.
Shellac's sixth studio album, To All Trains, is set to be released May 17.
