Today, Steve Albi­ni, the musi­cian and pro­duc­er of impor­tant albums by Nir­vana, PJ Har­vey, the Pix­ies and many oth­ers, passed away in Chica­go, at the all-too-ear­ly age of 61. In trib­ute, we’re bring­ing you this clas­sic 2013 post from our archive. 

Jour­ney­man record pro­duc­er Steve Albi­ni (he prefers to be called a “record­ing engi­neer”) is per­haps the cranki­est man in rock. This is not an effect of age. He’s always been that way, since the emer­gence of his scary, no-frills post-punk band Big Black and lat­er projects Rape­man and Shel­lac. In his cur­rent role as elder states­man of indie rock and more, Chicago’s Albi­ni has devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as kind of a hardass. He’s also a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al who musi­cians want to know and work with. From the sound of the Pix­ies’ Surfer Rosa to Joan­na Newsom’s Ys, Albi­ni has had a hand in some of the defin­ing albums of the last thir­ty plus years, and there is good rea­son for that: noth­ing sounds like an Albi­ni record. His method is all his own, and his results—minimalist, dynam­ic, and raw—are impos­si­ble to argue with.

So when Nir­vana embarked on record­ing their final, painful (in hind­sight) album In Utero, they asked Albi­ni to steer them away from the more major-label sound of the break­out Nev­er­mind, pro­duced by Butch Vig. True to form, the typ­i­cal­ly ver­bose Albi­ni sent a four-page typed let­ter in response. The let­ter (first page above—see the rest here) is a tes­ta­ment to per­haps the most thought­ful pro­duc­er since Quin­cy Jones and lays out Albini’s phi­los­o­phy in very fine detail. Two sam­ple para­graphs serve as a the­sis:

I’m only inter­est­ed in work­ing on records that legit­i­mate­ly reflect the band’s own per­cep­tion of their music and exis­tence. If you will com­mit your­selves to that as a tenet of the record­ing method­ol­o­gy, then I will bust my ass for you. I’ll work cir­cles around you. I’ll rap your head with a ratch­et…

I have worked on hun­dreds of records (some great, some good, some hor­ri­ble, a lot in the court­yard), and I have seen a direct cor­re­la­tion between the qual­i­ty of the end result and the mood of the band through­out the process. If the record takes a long time, and every­one gets bummed and scru­ti­nizes every step, then the record­ings bear lit­tle resem­blance to the live band, and the end result is sel­dom flat­ter­ing. Mak­ing punk records is def­i­nite­ly a case where more “work” does not imply a bet­ter end result. Clear­ly you have learned this your­selves and appre­ci­ate the log­ic.

Albi­ni decries any inter­fer­ence from the “front office bul­let­heads,” or record com­pa­ny execs (his feuds with such peo­ple are leg­endary), and makes it quite clear that he’s there to serve the inter­ests of the band and their sound, not the prod­uct of a mar­ket­ing cam­paign. While Albi­ni has issued many a surly man­i­festo over the years, this state­ment of his craft is maybe the most com­pre­hen­sive. He is dri­ven by what he calls a “kin­ship” with the bands he works with. And his pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to musi­cians and to qual­i­ty sound makes him one of the most artis­ti­cal­ly vir­tu­ous peo­ple work­ing in pop­u­lar music today. For more on In Utero, read Dave Grohl’s Rolling Stone inter­view here. Below, see Dave Grohl, Krist Novosel­ic and Steve Albi­ni dis­cuss the now-famous let­ter to Nir­vana.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Pro­duc­er Steve Albi­ni, Direc­tor God­frey Reg­gio & Actor Fred Armisen Explain Why Cre­at­ing Is Cru­cial to Human Exis­tence

An Awkward/NSFW Inter­view with Nir­vana Pro­duc­er Steve Albi­ni (Plus B‑52 Front­man Fred Schnei­der)

Vis­it “Mar­i­o­batal­ivoice,” the Cook­ing Blog by Steve Albi­ni, Musi­cian & Record Pro­duc­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Wendy Car­los released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “great­est hits” com­pi­la­tion of the Baroque composer’s music, played entire­ly on the Moog ana­log syn­the­siz­er, the album became an imme­di­ate hit with both clas­si­cal and pop audi­ences. Not only was it “acclaimed as real music by musi­cians and the lis­ten­ing pub­lic alike,” as Bob Moog him­self has writ­ten, but “as a result, the Moog Syn­the­siz­er was sud­den­ly accept­ed with open arms by the music busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.” There’s some exag­ger­a­tion here. Stars like the Doors, the Mon­kees, and the Byrds had already record­ed with Moogs the year before. And some clas­si­cal purists (and clas­si­cal Lud­dites) did not, in fact, hail Switched-On Bach as “real music.”

But on the whole, Carlos’s inno­v­a­tive demon­stra­tion of the elec­tron­ic instrument’s capa­bil­i­ties (and her own) marks a mile­stone in music his­to­ry as the first clas­si­cal album to go Plat­inum, and as the first intro­duc­tion of both Baroque music and the Moog syn­the­siz­er to mil­lions of peo­ple unfa­mil­iar with either.

Were it not for Carlos’s “use of the Moog’s oscil­la­tions, squeaks, drones, chirps, and oth­er sounds,” as Bruce Eder writes at All­mu­sic, it’s unlike­ly we would have the video clip above, of Leonard Bern­stein giv­ing his own demon­stra­tion of the Moog (dig his hip “HAL” ref­er­ence from the pri­or year’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), dur­ing one of his pop­u­lar tele­vised “Young People’s Con­certs.”

Hav­ing just begun mov­ing out of the stu­dio, the Moog was still a col­lec­tion of mod­u­lar box­es and patch cables—an engineer’s instrument—and it takes four men to wheel it out on stage. (The eas­i­ly portable, self-con­tained Min­i­moog wouldn’t appear until 1970.) Most peo­ple had no idea what a Moog actu­al­ly looked like. But, its for­bid­ding appear­ance aside, the sounds of the Moog were every­where.

Bern­stein men­tions Car­los, and those stuffy purists, and makes a few more sci-fi jokes, then, instead of sit­ting at the key­board, hits play on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. This pre-record­ed ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G” was actu­al­ly arranged by Wal­ter Sear, and the record­ing lacks some of the panache of Carlos’s play­ing while the tin­ny play­back sys­tem makes it sound like 8‑bit video game music. But for this audi­ence, the musi­cal wiz­ard­ly was still decid­ed­ly fresh.

The choice of Bach as Moog mate­r­i­al was not just a mat­ter of taste—his music was unique­ly suit­ed for Moog adap­ta­tion. As Car­los explains, “it was con­tra­pun­tal (not chords but musi­cal lines, like the Moog pro­duced), it used clean, Baroque lines, not demand­ing great ‘expres­si­vo’ (a weak­ness in the Moog at the time), and it was neu­tral as to orches­tra­tion.” The Moog could also, it seems, make Bach’s fugues fly at almost super­hu­man speeds. Hear the “Lit­tle Fugue” played at a much more state­ly tem­po, on a tra­di­tion­al pipe organ, fur­ther up, and hear it break into a run in the majes­tic per­for­mance just above.

Organs and harp­si­chords, strings and horns, these are still of course the instru­ments we think of when we think of Bach. Despite Carlos’s inven­tive foray—and its fol­low-up, The Well-Tem­pered Syn­the­siz­er—the syn­the­siz­er did not rad­i­cal­ize the clas­si­cal music world, though its avant-garde off­spring made much use of it. But it sure changed the sound of pop music, and wowed the kids who saw Bernstein’s pro­gram, some of whom may have gone on to pop­u­lar­ize both elec­tron­ic instru­ments and clas­si­cal themes in prog-rock, dis­co, and yes, even video game music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

A BBC Sci­ence Show Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er in 1969

Bob Moog Demon­strates His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Moog Mod­el D Syn­the­siz­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness