Thank you, Steve Albini

A new tribute to the late artist, provocateur and sonic conjurer for TIDAL

Above: Steve Albini in the studio with Zeni Geva in 1993, via the ZG Facebook page.

As thousands of others have stated during the past 24 hours, it’s hard to believe that Steve Albini is gone. Probably because for so many of us, he represented a major fulcrum of the underground culture that we have devoted a significant portion of our lives to. As I mention in this new tribute at TIDAL, kindly commissioned by my friend Brad Farberman, the discovery of the Steve Albini soundworld, via the 1993 self-titled debut by craw, opened up an entire universe for me.

He was bigger than any one album that he recorded or played on, any one sharply worded statement of censure against a predatory industry, any one hilarious and savagely unmerciful putdown. There were plenty of things Steve Albini hated that I love (Tool and Steely Dan among them!), but I always found his hot takes entertaining and, more importantly, entirely consistent with the value system that he staked out early on and followed through on to the end. He always was who he always was — a guy you could set your watch by.

Just browsing through his catalog today, I was newly inspired when noting the fact that in 1993, alone, the same year he tracked a future classic by the biggest band on the planet at the time, he also recorded some of the true greats of the underground: in addition to the aforementioned craw, Dazzling Killmen and Zeni Geva (see above), to name just two examples. With him, everything was a meritocracy and nothing mattered but the music — if you could throw down, you were as important as any arena-filling Hall of Famer. That was the fundamental truth I learned from his recordings, and in the 30 years since, I’ve never doubted it for a single second.

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Also recommended:

*Rob Sheffield’s typically brilliant, poignant, hilarious take for Rolling Stone, and Thurston Moore’s similarly illuminating thread.

*Authoritative rundowns of the catalog from my friends and former colleagues Christopher R. Weingarten (for the Times) and the RS staff.

*Informative obits by Lars Gotrich at NPR, Ben Sisario at the Times and Daniel Kreps at RS.