Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered audio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative rock music in the 1980s, the ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies and hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. The cause was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the studio in Chicago that Mr. Albini founded in 1997. With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded, and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was one of rock’s most acerbic wits. In the 1990s, when his work as a recording engineer — he scoffed at being called a “producer” — was in highest demand, however, Mr. Albini made no apology for accepting big checks for recording major-label bands. But those bands did so at their own risk; in those days Mr. Albini was also known for ridiculing the bands he recorded after the fact.

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Persons: Steve Albini, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Taylor Hales, Albini, —, ” — Locations: Chicago