15 French and Belgian Records Engineered by Steve Albini

RIP Steve Albini. His recording credits include records from Sloy, Dionysos, Cocaine Piss, les Thugs, H-Burns, Dead Man Ray, Expérience...

Steve Albini, the American musician and sound engineer suddenly died on May 7 at the age of 61. A tragic loss for the music world.

Steve Albini was above all a punk rocker. Because of this ethos, he was free to record whoever was asking him to (for a small fee), as long as there was no computer involved. Extremely prolific, you might know Steve Albini from his work with Nirvana, Pixies or Low but did you know he recorded a bunch of French punk in the nineties, before pivoting to Belgian indie rock?

Here is fifteen bands who made the trip to Chicago from Brussels or Paris to record with Albini in his Electrical Studio. I’ve limited myself to one album per band. I know I have missed a few. I don’t care.

Sloy - Plug - 1995

Steve Albini made noise rock (mostly with Big Black and Rapeman) so it make sense his first French collaboration was with a band sharing his aesthetic. Sloy is a cult band from Béziers, with a short but productive life: 3 albums in 6 years of existence. Albini has produced the first two but the debut album, Plug, remains their masterpiece: punk, angry and jumpy. The three members of Sloy are still active as musicians, you can find them separately playing with a whole bunch of other bands (Miossec, Dionysos, Java…)

Les Thugs - Strike - 1996

Long before Slift, the Thugs were the very first band to be signed on Sub Pop, Nirvana’s historical record label. Steve Albini famously worked on Nirvana’s last LP, In Utero, ensuring him a solid relationship with Sub Pop. Hailing from Angers, the Thugs were definitely The French band of the the grunge wave. They played with Nirvana, Therapy? and The Breeders among others. The prescient Strike was the Thugs’ sixth album but also the beginning of the end where sales started to decline and critical reception became more mixed. For my money, it’s still a fucking good rock album. Sadly, the band was disappointed by their collaboration with Steve Albini and never worked with him again.

Heliogabale – The Full Mind Is Alone The Clear - 1997

Heliogabale’s seminal third album is characterized by an extremely harsh guitar sound, a female singer screaming hysterically, a drum kit being loudly beaten and haunting bass lines. In Albini’s hands, Heliogabale sounds like a Parisian Sonic Youth: artsy, angry and horny.

Vandal X – Songs From The Heart - 1999

Credited as “the first Belgian band to work with Steve Albini”, Vandal X is a Flemmish duo playing a very abrasive noise rock. It’s hard to know if they are from Limburg or Ghent but they are apparently still kicking around after 25 years. If you like grunge-adjacent noise classics like Unsane or Helmet, Songs From The Heart is for you: a solid 20-track album and probably their best record.

Dead Man Ray – Cago - 2002

For a while, Cago was the last album from Dead Man Ray, a side project including some members of the legendary Belgian band dEUS. But they decided to come back in 2019 with another final album after a 16-year hiatus. Dead Man Ray is a typical Belgian rock band, in good and bad ways: very grounded, professional, great singing (no silly accents here) but with a lack of charisma that can be painful to listen to. Sometimes working with Albini only gives you a good sound. If you don’t have the songs, you don’t have the songs.

Dionysos – Western Sous La Neige - 2002

This is it. The least expected collaboration. What does Steve Albini have to do with Dionysos, a quirky indie pop band with a theremin? It’s easier to understand when you remember Dionysos was a lo-fi rock band in their first records. Even if their music don’t match, Albini and Malzieu share values and methods. For their fourth album, Dionysis went full concept with a snowy western vibe, full a cool songs and happy tunes, inspired by Pixies and Sebadoh. The production is flawless.

Uncommonmenfrommars – Kill The Fuse - 2003

A bunch of French men with the thickest accent singing punk rock like it’s 2003. The guitar sound is immaculate, the songs not so much. It’s pretty bad.

Chevreuil - Capoëira - 2006

Chevreuil is a legendary math-rock duo hailing from Nantes. Only two people but a shit-ton of amps, a weird little synth, a crazy drummer and some good guitar riffs. France always been a good nation for math-rock with plenty of bands well versed in the genre (I’ll make a list one day). Capoëira alternate between very short bursts of energy and complex tracks clicking at 7-8 minutes. This instrumental record, the last from Chevreuil, doesn’t bare any resemblance from the Brazilian dance its named after. But after a couple of gut-punching tracks you’ll want to spin on your head too.

Experience - Nous (en) sommes encore là - 2008

I already talked extensively about Michel Cloup in the very first post of this newsletter. He’s one of the most underappreciated figures in French music since the nineties and an exceptional singer/lyricist with a dozen of records in his discography (with the cult band Diabologum, Binary Audio Misfits, as a solo artist…). Experience was the rock project from Michel Cloup. Therefore it make sense to hire Albini for the recording of their final album, a winning combo of noise rock with a hint of political rap (you can even hear Psykick Lyrikah on the awesome La République Invisible [trad: The Invisible Republic]).

H-Burns - Off the Map - 2013

Renaud Brustlein aka H-Burns had been making music for a full decade when his new and hip label (Vietnam, a short -live record label from the founder of So Foot, a French magazine dedicated to the world of soccer) decided to send him in Chicago to record his fourth solo album. H-Burns is one of our rare rock singers who can sing English without sounding like an idiot. Heavily inspired by Pavement or Neutral Milk Hotel, recording in Chicago was the perfect fit for H-Burns American influences.

Gruppo Di Pawlowski – Neutral Village Massacre - 2014

As its name suggests, this is the band of Mauro Pawlowski, a reknown rock guitarist in Belgium, who played most famously with dEUS between 2005 and 2017 (and he’s back since last year). There’s a cute Tom Waits vibe going on. Like Dead Man Ray earlier (with which it shares a guitarist), it smells too much like a side project to have stood the passing of time, but the seamless production has nothing to do with it.

Raketkanon – RKTKN #2 - 2015

Raketkanon (Rocketcannon in Flemish) is a short-lived four-piece band from Ghent. After only three records under the belt (RKTKN #1, #2 and #3) and a decade spent travelling the world, they decided to call it quit in 2019. The Albini-produced number 2 is an excellent album of sludgey rock with minimalist synths and some of the greatest high-pitched screams from their crazy singer.

Décibelles - Rock français - 2019

Décibelles (from Lyon) started has a fun girl duo, but then added a dude (booo). After ending up opening for Shellac (they had the habit of selecting local bands as first act when they played abroad), Albini decided to record Décibelles’s first and only album. It’s surprisingly good for an album jokingly titled Rock Français [trad: French Rock], with flowery song titles like “Eat my Ex” or “I really like my clit”.

Cocaine Piss - Passionate and Tragic - 2019

Steve Albini has more than 650 recording credits so it’s fair to say not all of them were his favories. But we know Steve LOVED Cocaine Piss. You can see him rocking a Cocaine Piss t-shirt during the World Series of Poker. And he’s right. Cocaine Piss was an awesome band, the best Belgian band of the last 10 years. Turns out, Passionate and Tragic would become Cocaine Piss’ final LP: a masterpiece of anticapitalist punk delivered in the coolest way possible. It’s hard to top.

Ogives – La Mémoire des Orages - 2023

Ogives is a nine-piece post rock ensemble born in Liège, Belgium. Beyond noise and punk, Albini also had a knack for recording post rock (with GYBE, Slint or Mono). Something about recording long tracks of organised chaos stood out with him. La mémoire des orages [trad: The Memory of Storms] is Ogives’ first album, a grandiose post rock album with religious undertones. After the news of his passing, Pavel Tchikov, Ogives’ bandleader, told the story of the marathon recording: 75 minutes recorded and mixed in 4 days with half a budget and no time to lose.