Taylor Kirk, frontman of Timber Timbre, has died

On a brisk November day in 2024, a crowd gathers on Belmont Ave. in Chicago outside a two-story brick building, the only hint of its storied significance a red door bearing a lower-case “e” placard. Family, friends, and fans are here to pay tribute to Steve Albini, the venerated recording engineer, who died of a heart attack six months prior at age 61. The City of Chicago is honoring him, giving the street flanking his long-running Electrical Audio studio the designation of Steve Albini Way.

It’s an apt distinction: Albini’s way — from his unusual approach to recording, which emphasized the live sound of a band and influenced decades of rock music, to his cantankerous screeds, which often warranted accusations of misogyny and racism in his earlier years — was one of a kind. Albini was also a loyal friend whose personal sense of fairness, often delivered with scathing humor, served as his compass. And he had a redemptive sea change in the last decades of his life, one that many close to him attribute to Heather Whinna, who married Albini in 2009.