Steven Frank "Steve" Albini (July 22, 1962 - May 7, 2024) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, Pete Conway's solo project Flour, and a member of Shellac. He was the founder, owner and principal engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex located in Chicago. As a recording engineer Albini had worked with artists including Breeders, PJ Harvey, Jesus Lizard, Bitch Magnet, Mclusky, Mono, Nina Nastasia, Nirvana, Pixies, Slint, Superchunk, Urge Overkill and Wedding Present.
Links To Peel[]
Peel was a big fan of Albini's output as a musician for Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac, as well as his production work for artists such as the Wedding Present and Nirvana. As mentioned on his 15 January 2002 show, the DJ got to meet Albini in Groningen, Netherlands, at the Eurosonic festival:
- "An exciting moment in my life: we've had drinks with Steve Albini who's been a hero of mine for many, many years but a man of whom I was slightly frightened because he had a fairly fearsome reputation. Turns out to be a most amiable and very focussed kind of bloke actually, with a lot of interesting ideas which I may pass on to you in the next few months."
On his 09 January 2003 show, Peel mentioned that Albini had sent a copy of Nina Nastasia's debut LP, "Dogs". In return, John was supposed to send back a copy of the debut LP from Laura Cantrell, but admitted that he hadn't done so yet.
After Peel's death in 2004, in an interview with music reviewer Mark Prindle in 2005, Albini recalled a comment made to him by the DJ that had left an impression on him:
- "John Peel said something that I thought was really profound. He said when he gets a record from somebody and he doesn't like it, he assumes that it's his problem and that the band would not have made that record if there wasn't something valuable about it."[1]
In 2014, at the Face The Music conference in Melbourne, Australia, Albini praised Peel for his help to unknown artists:
- "International exposure was extraordinarily expensive. In order for your records to make it into overseas hands you had to convince a distributor to export them. And that was difficult with no means for anyone to hear the record and decide to buy it. So you ended up shipping promotional copies overseas at a terrific expense, never sure if they would be listened to or not. The one exception to this was the brilliant BBC DJ John Peel. He listened religiously to every single record he received in the mail, devoting hours of every day to the task. I sent him a copy of the first album I ever made and not only did he play the record on air, he sent me back a postcard with a personal remembrance of Chicago, of visiting a matron aunt as a child in Evanston, the suburb where my post office box was kept. I treasured that note as the first indication that John Peel was a great man."[2]
Shows Played[]
Steve Albini - Nutty About Lemurs (tree of life)
- 1990
- 04 April 1990: King Creole (v/a album - The Last Temptation Of Elvis) New Musical Express
- 12 April 1990: King Creole (v/a album - The Last Temptation Of Elvis) New Musical Express
- 30 April 1990: King Creole (v/a LP - The Last Temptation Of Elvis) New Musical Express
- 1992
- 02 February 1992: Nutty About Lemurs (compilation - Guitarrorists) No. 6 Records