AURAL ROBERT

Recording music is complicated, and without the crucial assistance of producers and engineers, a lot of great records-not to mention successful musical careers would not happen.

- ROBERT BAIRD

Producers Steve Albini and Michael Cuscuna, two key figures from the music world who departed in recent months, richly deserve to be celebrated.

Though they worked in widely disparate genres-Cuscuna primarily in jazz, Albini in punk and noise rock-they are connected by their extraordinary efforts and unfailing taste. Both were exacting, dedicated, and supremely talented. Without the passion and obsessive nature of this one-of-a-kind pair, such records as Nirvana's In Utero and Mosaic Records' boxed sets, including The Blue Note Hank Mobley Fifties Sessions, to name just two examples, would not exist. Cuscuna and Albini were guides and molders, shaping music and our perceptions of it.

Raised in Missoula, Montana, Steve Albini was into music early, playing in the Montana band Just Ducky before moving to Chicago to go to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. While there, he wrote for various local 'zines that covered the punk-rock scene and spent time at a side hustle in a photography studio while continuing to play electric guitar and learn about sound. He described himself as the one guy in the band who "could explain to the sound man how loud we want the bass drum." His bands Big Black, and later Rapeman and Shellac, played noisy punk-rock and had small but devoted followings. Albini died 10 days before the release of Shellac's sixth album, To All Trains.

Already the engineer of choice for '90sera Chicago-area bands including Veruca Salt and Urge Overkill, Albini made his name when he recorded the Pixies' Surfer Rosa (1988) and The Wedding Present's Seamonsters (1991). In 1993, he engineered Rid of Me for PJ Harvey and In Utero for Nirvana. He opened his Chicago recordingstudio complex, Electrical Audio, in 1997.