When Nirvana showed up at Pachyderm Recording Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota on February 12, 1993 to begin work upon In Utero, their much-anticipated follow-up to 1991's phenomenally-successful Nevermind album, Kurt Cobain had something special to show the man he'd handpicked to produce the album.
Nirvana's frontman had long spoken of his admiration for the sound of Pixies' 1988 album Surfer Rosa, and The Breeders' 1990 album Pod, both of which had been produced (or 'engineered', as he preferred to say) by Steve Albini, the former frontman of Big Black. In his private journals, Cobain had also listed Big Black's 1986 debut album Atomizer as one of his [many] personal favourite records, and had, in fact, been in attendance when Big Black played their last ever show, at the Georgetown Steamplant in Seattle on August 11, 1987. As he would prove to Albini when the pair met for the first time ahead of the studio sessions for In Utero.
