Dirty Three, PR
Chicago musician and recording engineer Steve Albini has died. The indie rock icon suffered a heart attack and passed away on Tuesday 7 May at the age of 61. Albini is best known for producing Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me, and for releasing several albums as the guitarist and vocalist in the bands Big Black and Shellac.
Albini started making records in the early 1980s when he was in his late teens. He worked on a staggering number of releases over the next four-and-a-bit decades, often with artists who lived deep in the underground. In 1997, he founded the analogue-focused recording studio, Electrical Audio, where he worked for the rest of his life.
Albini welcomed a bunch of Australian artists to Electrical Audio over the years, including Dirty Three, whose landmark release, Ocean Songs, was recorded there not long after it opened. Below you’ll find details of all the essential Australian albums engineered by Albini.
The Mark of Cain – Incoming EP (1993)
The Mark of Cain’s two core members, brothers John and Kim Scott, met Albini when The Mark of Cain supported Big Black on their 1987 Australian tour. Albini went on to engineer the bulk of the Adelaide alt-metal band’s 1993 EP Incoming.
Incoming was a pivotal release for The Mark of Cain, arriving after a period of inactivity that followed their second album, 1990’s The Unclaimed Prize. The band’s brief partnership with Albini paved the way for their opus, 1995’s Ill At Ease, produced by Henry Rollins.
Dirty Three – Ocean Songs (1998), Ufkuko EP (1998)
While Albini is generally associated with loud, raw rock music, he worked with many quieter, folkier artists in his lifetime. Melbourne band Dirty Three certainly have a wild streak, but their Albini-produced fourth album, Ocean Songs, marked a shift towards a more minimal and reflective sound.
It remains one of the band’s defining works, and has been performed live in its entirerty at events such as All Tomorrow’s Parties and London’s Don’t Look Back series.
Purplene – Purplene (2004)
Newcastle band Purplene travelled to Electrical Audio to work with Albini on their self-titled second album. The band’s love of Pavement and Built to Spill is evident throughout the record, but in contrast to their earlier work, Purplene showcases a more refined, post rock-adjacent sound.
The record was apparently sequenced and mastered for vinyl, but given its 2004 release date, it was only issued on CD. It wasn’t until 2018 – more than a dozen years after Purplene’s break-up – that Hobbledehoy Records pressed the album to vinyl for the first time.
My Disco – Paradise (2008), Little Joy (2010)
The music of Melbourne trio My Disco is perfectly suited to Albini’s no-nonsense approach. The band’s records are rooted in repetition, with band members Rohan Rebeiro and Ben and Liam Andrews harnessing minimal layers to make a crushing impact.
Albini often waved off the title of producer, choosing instead to be known as an engineer. The liner notes of My Disco’s Paradise adhere to this preference: “Paradise was recorded in October of 2007 at Electrical Audio in Chicago, Illinois. Steve Albini engineered the session.”
The Crooked Fiddle Band – Overgrown Tales (2011), Moving Pieces Of The Sea (2013)
Sydney foursome The Crooked Fiddle Band hooked up with Albini to make two albums of violin-led folk-punk madness. The first, 2011’s Overgrown Tales, is as old-timey as it is irreverent, placing never-ending fiddle riffs alongside flourishes of the Swedish stringed instrument nyckelharpa and the Greek bouzouki.
2013’s Moving Pieces of the Sea was written while the band were travelling across Norwegian fjords and Finnish lakes. Influenced by these surroundings, it’s more spacious than its predecessor, but no less animated.
Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold (2017)
Iceland-based Australian musician Ben Frost worked with Albini on his fifth album, The Centre Cannot Hold – a suite of unsettling electronic noise installations that was recorded over ten days at Electrical Audio.
There’s a clear gulf between Frost’s neoclassical iconoclasm and the Nirvana and Pixies records that made Albini’s name. But the presence of records like The Centre Cannot Hold in Albini’s discography are a testament to the Chicago maverick’s long-held curiosity.
