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

81–90 of 191 posts

Re: Steve Albini has died

#81

Post by hipnoizz »

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 with) falls squarely into what moves me (for whatever reasons). And I think he was a really genuine person (outspoken, yes).

Re: Steve Albini has died

#83

Post by TylerE »

mgkimsal wrote: post #50
breput wrote: post #17

"I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There's no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn't be able to sleep." [0] https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana

I'm trying to reconcile that 'plumber' against George Martin with the Beatles. He was paid like a plumber for the first couple years, and... EMI treated him with such disdain that he ended up leaving. I'm sure the money was much better after he left, but... had EMI just been slightly nicer to him, they'd have owned him for many more years. That said, I think his relationship with his bands opened up areas for him to…

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.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#84

Post by hipnoizz »

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…

Zeni Geva is such a great band! Maybe you have already seen it, but I've always loved this live cover of 'Model' Kraftwerk by Zeni Geva & Albini - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8R7c7XYmI4.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#85

Post by thr0waway001 »

zzzbra wrote: post #20

This is hugely surprising. 61 is not old man. Is it me or does seem like the Gen Xers in the so-called counter culture are less long lived than their Boomer counterparts?

I was talking about this with my g/f when watching Clerks 3.

It seems that no other generation seems to be facing their mortality much sooner than Gen Xers.

Clerks 3 is a movie about two old Gen Xers coping with getting old, having heart attacks, coping with grief, struggling with loneliness, while the world passes them by.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#86

Post by runnr_az »

pstuart wrote: post #79
runnr_az wrote: post #43

We all agree that Jawbreaker's "24 Hour Revenge Therapy" was his best production work, right?

But I'm gonna be that guy that says "Dear You" is better. To each their own, but it's a pity that album got slagged.

We were such dicks back then. I blame Steve Albini :)

Re: Steve Albini has died

#87

Post by jprival »

agumonkey wrote: post #25
zzzbra wrote: post #20

This is hugely surprising. 61 is not old man. Is it me or does seem like the Gen Xers in the so-called counter culture are less long lived than their Boomer counterparts?

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

Re: Steve Albini has died

#88

Post by amarcozzi »

I paused at the name because there was a great scientist and engineer named Frank Albini in the field of wildfire science. Lo and behold Steve Albini was the son of said Frank Albini. I haven't heard of Steve Albini before, and I'm not familiar with his music, but he clearly had an enormous impact. I just thought that it was interesting that both father and son could leave behind such a large legacy in their respective endeavors.

Re: Steve Albini has died

#90

Post by fogbeak »

amarcozzi wrote: post #88

I paused at the name because there was a great scientist and engineer named Frank Albini in the field of wildfire science. Lo and behold Steve Albini was the son of said Frank Albini. I haven't heard of Steve Albini before, and I'm not familiar with his music, but he clearly had an enormous impact. I just thought that it was interesting that both father and son could leave behind such a large legacy in their respecti…

If you're interested, Steve (Albini) goes into detail about his father and his contributions to wildfire science during an interview on the Marc Maron podcast. It's fascinating listening.
Post reply on HN