A big noise

Scott Kara pays tribute to alternative rock figurehead Steve Albini.

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Steve Albini was the type of musician who delighted in wiping the floor with the adoring fans in front of him. When his band, Shellac, played at the Mandalay Ballroom in Auckland in 2001, they smeared the crowd across the floor, walls and ceiling. The sonic assault was confronting and thrilling, all in one.

But the cult-hero status of Albini, who died on May 7 of a heart attack aged 61, was as much earned for his work recording other acts and the raw, no-frills aesthetic he brought to the studio as it was for his own music.

Prominent albums that got the Albini treatment included Nirvana's swansong, In Utero, the Pixies' debut, Surfer Rosa, PJ Harvey's sophomore, Rid of Me, and even Walking into Clarksdale, the one-off 1998 studio reunion of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. He also had repeat clients in Low, The Dirty Three, The Breeders and The Jesus Lizard, and after his profile rose in the 1990s, continued to record dozens of underground acts, among them NZ bands. Dunedin trio Die! Die! Die!, then a riotous outfit right up Albini's musical alley, recorded their 2005 self-titled debut album with him.