Not solely was the late Steve Albini a legendary recording engineer, musician, and poker participant, he was additionally a longtime collector of underground memorabilia. Now, 1000’s of his belongings—uncommon vinyl, bizarre books, classic t-shirts, CDs, cassettes, singles, zines, artwork, and “mysterious bargains”—are being bought on Steve Albini’s Closet, a brand new web site that operates as a weekly digital property sale. A brand new batch of things from Albini’s archives will likely be launched each Friday by way of the tip of 2025. Byron Coley of Pressured Publicity runs the location, with all cash going to the late Albini’s property.
“Steve pursued many fields of curiosity, and most of them are represented someplace in his collections,” reads the web site’s description. “All gadgets bought are accompanied by a Certificates of Authenticity from the gathering’s administrator, Byron Coley, and the proceeds are directed in direction of Steve’s property. All supplies are assured genuine, and listings are up to date on a weekly foundation. All supplies are assured genuine, and listings are up to date on a weekly foundation. Some gadgets are bought by way of different websites like Discogs and eBay.”
All gadgets from the primary spherical of accessible belongings have since been bought, together with the grasp of Neurosis’ A Solar That By no means Units and Albini’s private copies of data by Useless Moon, Large Boys, Can, U-Males, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, Cinerama, Didjits, and dozens extra. In keeping with the location’s classes, although, it appears to be like like there’s loads extra to return past vinyl and CDs within the coming weeks, together with poker-related belongings, outdated fliers, live performance posters, and even awards.
Albini died on Could 7, 2024, of a coronary heart assault at age 61. Along with fronting the important rock bands Shellac and Large Black, he was a veteran of the recording studio—the place he most popular being referred to as an “engineer” as a substitute of a “producer”—who recorded all the pieces from Nirvana’s In Utero and PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me to Joanna Newsom’s Ys and Cloud Nothings’ Assault on Reminiscence. His final recorded album as a musician was Shellac’s To All Trains, their first album in a decade, which got here out per week after his demise.
Along with his musical accolades, Albini was additionally an outspoken critic of exploitative music business practices and a exceptional poker participant with two World Collection of Poker gold bracelets. Final summer season, town of Chicago named the 2600-2700 block of West Belmont Avenue, which is residence to Albini’s recording studio Electrical Audio, as “Steve Albini Means.”
