Steve Albini performs. (Credit: Freekorpos / Wikimedia Commons)

Steve Albini, the influential recording engineer behind Chicago’s Electrical Audio studios and a member of bands like Big Black and Shellac, died Tuesday. He was 61. 

Brian Fox, an engineer at Albini's studio, said Wednesday that Albini died after a heart attack Tuesday night. His death was first reported by Pitchfork.

Albini was a fierce supporter of independent music and a dogged critic of the music industry. When he started his music career in 1981 as a journalism student at Northwestern University, the bands he fronted like Big Black booked their own tours, refused to sign to major labels, and never hired a manager. 

He was a punk provocateur who channeled that do-it-yourself sensibility when he became an in-demand recording engineer for independent and alternative bands in the mid-80s. 

Albini disliked using the term “producer” to describe his work on iconic albums like the Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa,” PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me,” and Nirvana’s “In Utero,” and preferred to be called an engineer.

Widely credited with influencing the sound of alternative rock music for decades, he continued to record bands until his death at his Avondale studio Electrical Audio, which opened in 1997.  

Unlike most of his peers, Albini refused to take any royalties from musicians who recorded at his studio. 

His long-running musical project Shellac is set to release a new album called “To All Trains” on May 17. 

Albini was born in California, grew up in Montana and ended up in Chicago. 

“The recording part is the part that matters to me — that I’m making a document that records a piece of our culture, the life’s work of the musicians that are hiring me,” Albini told The Guardian last year, when asked about some of the well-known and much-loved albums he's recorded. "I take that part very seriously. I want the music to outlive all of us.”

Albini is survived by his wife, Heather Whinna, a filmmaker.

The Associated Press contributed.