How Steve Albini changed rock music, in 12 essential songs

Steve Albini stood for a sound. But he also stood for an ethos.

Famous among rock fans for his work in the recording studio with the likes of Nirvana and the Pixies — and for his own bands Shellac and Big Black — Albini was known for harsh guitars and booming drums presented with none of the sweetening that can make a rock record sound like a candyland. As a producer (though he preferred to be called an engineer), he took a "documentary approach to recording music," he told The Times in 1993, not long after he oversaw the making of Nirvana's final studio album, "In Utero."

Yet Albini, who died Tuesday at age 61, was almost equally revered for his straightforward criticisms of the record industry and its propensity to corrupt the purity of creative expression. To him, stardom was a trap, which is one reason he was known for years to record virtually any band that asked him to at his studio in Chicago. What he offered musicians was wisdom, honesty and technical know-how; what he got out of his clients more often than not was some of their best work. Here, in the order they were released, are 12 of Albini's essential recordings.

1. Big Black, "Kerosene" (1986)

A would-be arsonist explains himself — his motive: boredom — as slashing guitars scrape against the mechanized thump of a Roland drum machine. No Big Black, no Nine Inch Nails.

2. Pixies, "Where Is My Mind?" (1988)

"Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings," Albini famously wrote after recording the debut album by this seminal alt-rock quartet. Yet even now nothing sounds quite like the Pixies' most enduring tune: a haunted psychedelic-soul jam in which the ultra-reverbed backing vocals conjure the terrifying underwater expanse that singer Black Francis describes in his lyric. Thanks in part to a prominent placement in 1999's "Fight Club," "Where Is My Mind?" has been streamed more than 850 million times on Spotify.

3. The Breeders, "Iris" (1990)

Clearly unbothered by the nose-ring comment, the Pixies' Kim Deal drafted Albini to oversee the first record by her other band, and it's not hard to see why: No one ever showcased the feral beauty of Deal's singing like he did.

4. Helmet, "In the Meantime" (1992)

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