Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Albini has died

pitchfork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 191 posts

Re: Steve Albini has died

#101

Post by singingfish »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #33
quickthrowman wrote: post #5

Oh man, that’s terrible! I was waiting to hear when the next Shellac tour was going to be taking place, as they’ve got an album coming out next week. I’m a huge, huge fan of Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac, and Steve Albini’s production (Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Jesus Lizard’s discography, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, Brainiac’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, Songs:Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Company, plus hundr…

His very close-miked sound still containing a tasteful (i.e. light) amount of reverb is such a recognizable signature... A true legend, and big coincidence since I discovered yet another of his production a week ago: Zeni Geva's last three LPs. Almost as important as the ubiquitous Dan Swano in my collection: $ find -L ~/Music -type f -name album.json -exec jqmusic '.credits | has("Steve Albini")' {} \; -print | awk…

I'm going to put this here - The Crooked Fiddle Band - a Sydney folk band with major inspiration from Big Black and others had two albums produced by Albini - I couldn't think of a better match:

https://crookedfiddleband.bandcamp.com/album/overgrown-tales https://crookedfiddleband.bandcamp.com/album/moving-pieces-o...

Re: Steve Albini has died

#104

Post by agumonkey »

jprival wrote: post #87
agumonkey wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, unlike rock stars with wild lives, I did expect a guy like him to live long

because of his sort of ascetic impulses in other domains one doesn’t imagine him as particularly hard-living, but this 2002 ilxor thread (bumped for his death) suggests that he had his first heart attack way back: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?bo... edit: viral pericarditis, actually, before it was a hot topic

Oh, thanks for the link. I had no idea.

His story about the band cut on an album budget is mind blowing too.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#105

Post by [deleted] »

bjw4 wrote: post #99

Sad to hear Steve has passed. I met Steve, Bob and Todd at Camber Sands 2001 very briefly, really nice people who didn't act like rockstars at all. Q&A sessions, banter with hecklers, Todd talked about his dog (an Italian Greyhound) a bit. Friends band recorded at EA, only possible due to charging a low flat fee and no royalties based on who they were - incredible work ethic that has influenced me greatly. Listening…

[deleted]

Re: Steve Albini has died

#106

Post by joemi »

hipnoizz wrote: post #81
joemi wrote: post #58

A lot of the bigger name albums he engineered were ones I listened to and loved before knowing that he was a common thread between them (or even who he was in general), but one that I gave a listen to specifically because he engineered it was an album called Stella by a band named Uzeda. I had never heard of them before, but it was wonderful! All the words that often describe his sound (and also his music) apply here…

Approached Uzeda a few times (I'm much into noise-rock-and-all-the-friendly-neighbourhood) but it didn't click. On the other hand https://bellini.bandcamp.com/album/the-precious-prize-of-gra... (which consist of 2/4th or 3/4th of Uzeda I think plus Alexis Fleisig from GvsB) is great. Anyway, I was kind of shattered by the news. All the stuff Steve Albini created (both as the sound engineer and the bands he played wit…

Thanks, I'll have to check them out.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#107

Post by mgkimsal »

gizajob wrote: post #91
TylerE wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Martin was so involved in the creative process he was closer to a 5th bandmember, and was sometimes called such by the Beatles. He had more involvement in the creative product than most producers, including writing and arranging the strings, brass, and winds parts that are all over later Beatles records, and appeared as an instrumental performer on over 25 Beatles tracks.

So much that EMI have been fixing his work for 60 years now, in particular his decision to split the Beatles tracks arbitrarily between the two speakers for all the stereo mixes, despite the Beatles personal involvement in the mixing process for the mono mix downs which sound infinitely better.

There just wasn't much focus on stereo until the late 60s. Most acts back then have stereo mixes that are not much more than an afterthought.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#108

Post by mycologos »

tonymet wrote: post #98
yterdy wrote: post #97

[flagged]

context?

People kept flagging threads announcing Kobe's death when it happened back in January 2020, claiming they were irrelevant to HN. In the end, I think they all got deleted.

In contrast, Terry Jones got his own black bar a few days beforehand. For some reason, he was deemed extremely relevant to HN.

I appreciate that keeping HN from devolving too far into angry shitposting requires subjective moderation, but I thought and think this was stupid and demonstrates how narrow-minded the conception of "hacker" can be on here.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#109

Post by vondur »

ilamont wrote: post #3

Hard to overstate Albini's influence, both as a musician and producer. Big Black? No one was doing stuff like that in the mid-80s. His production on PJ Harvey's Rid of Me took her compositions to a new level. He also produced a lot of very fine albums in the 80s and 90s by the Pixies (Surfer Rosa), Nirvana (In Utero) and various albums by The Jesus Lizard, Superchunk, and others. Yes, he was cantankerous. Marched to…

He couldn't be more wrong with regards to Skate Punk.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#110

Post by laurex »

This is one of those threads where you may discover people you haven't seen for a zillion years are on Hacker News. And though I never knew him well, he was nice to me on the occasions I had to interact with him, though you know, there's also a kind of unapologetic misogynistic arrogance in his musical catalogue (umm, Rapeman?) that his legacy will need to contend with.
Post reply on HN