Yeah, O'Rourke is one of my favorites, his work with Stereolab and Gastr Del Sol is amazing. Didn't he produce that last Brainaic EP too? Great stuff.
My absolute favorite producer is Scott Colburn; he's almost like a 4th member of Sun City Girls at times (as well as producing lots of their side projects and whatnot); he produced every one of their albums between 1993 and 2007. He also produced lots Cerberus Shoal, Climax Golden Twins (which he's a member of), Burmese, he remastered tons of old Captain Beefheart recordings for the "Grow fins" box set, he produces most Sublime Frequencies stuff.. some Keith Rowe and AMM stuff... and he produces, like, 60 albums a year, if not more. Dude's an insane workaholic, here's his resume:
http://www.gravelvoice.com/credits/ ... also, a supernice guy, too, me and him have chatted before about SS and CGT!
Another favorite producer is Alex Newport. He's produced Ikara Colt, Polysics, his bands Theory of Ruin and Fudge Tunnel, and plenty more.
Brian Paulson's production on Spiderland is unbelievable, he also produced some U.S. Maple stuff that is probably my favorite record production ever. Mike Thorne's production on the first 3 Wire albums is some of the greatest of all time, too.
Bob Weston is incredible -- his work with Mission of Burma, Fiery Furnaces (who I'm not really a fan of, but the production is immaculate), Magic Band (he produced "back to the front", the Captain Beefheartless Magic Band album where they did new versions of old songs, and it sounds incredible), Shuttlecock, Polvo, Six Finger Satellite, Thinking Fellers Union Local # 282 (their best work "Admonishing the Bishops") and Rodan ("Rusty" sounds AMAZING!).
Zappa, another obvious one; Beefheart produced his last 3 albums (Shiny Beast, Doc at the Radar Station, and Ice Cream for Crow) and they sound INCREDIBLE... especially when you consider all that's going on, like in a song like "When I SEE Mommy, I feel like a Mummy" and SUCTION PRINTS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8jfnyOyqX8
Listen to that song; all the horns, the drums, two guitars, bass, synth (yep, synth), and sounds of unknown origin. Fucking awesome.
As for Albini, I am a fan of his, obviously, and a huge fan of a lot of the bands he works with, like Space Streakings and Shakuhaichi Surprise -- but, le'ts face it, his dry recording style doesn't really work with alot of bands (see the Melt Banana albums produced by him versus the ones NOT produced by him for a great example). He gets a great drum sound; unfortunately, with faster/more energetic bands, the drums often feel lumbering and struggling to keep up because they are SO powerful and overwhelming. His work on Jesus Lizard's stuff is absolutely incredible, as well as At aCtion Park and Terraform -- I think he works really well with miinmal, slower bands. I just can't see him doing good production on, like, a 250bpm punk album for example...
Finally, gotta give props to DAVE FRIDMANN, his work with Number Girl and Zazen Boys is un-fucking-with-able. He's worked with a lot of bands I don't like, but his production is always amazing (doesn't he always produce Flaming Lips albums, too? They're up there with Tortoise and Stereolab as always having consistently great production, and there's always tons of shit going on....).