"[4] Riley joined Big Black the week of Racer-X's release in April 1985, while also keeping his day job as a litigation law clerk.

[2] That May, Riley produced and played saxophone on Ward, an EP by Chicago experimental band End Result which came out on Albini's Ruthless Records label.

[1][7] Big Black's Atomizer came out in 1986; in Our Band Could Be Your Life (2001), author Michael Azerrad remarks that "Riley's gnarled bass sound combined explosively with the brutally insistent hammering of the drum machine while his funk background gave the music an almost danceable kick".

[2] The album was polarizing due to its aggressive, violent music and lyrics, but won praised in the national press and became an underground success, selling 3,000 copies upon its release on Homestead Records.

"[9] After a falling out with Homestead and its distributor, Dutch East India Trading, Big Black signed to Touch and Go Records and released the Headache EP in spring 1987.

[11] Albini later claimed that Riley was "kind of fucked up most of the time" (which Riley denied) and accused him of a number of other shortcomings including "always [being] late for rehearsal, never having equipment together, needing a ride to everything, a fresh excuse for every day, generally unkempt and unreliable, impossible to communicate with when loaded, flashes of brilliance offset by flashes of belligerence.

[11][12] Albini made a number of threats, but never fired Riley; Durango later remarked that "It was kind of a love-hate thing" and speculated that "maybe on some subconscious level he understood that that was something Dave brought to the band.

[5][15] Big Black's second studio album, Songs About Fucking, was released shortly after their breakup and became their best-selling record, with an initial pressing of 8,000 copies.

[3] The doctors attending to him erroneously thought that his condition was the result of drug use or a suicide attempt, and he was forced to live in a "convalescent home" for nearly 10 years, with people he described as "lowlifes, criminals, psychopaths, and token seniors with whom nobody wanted to bother.

"[3][5] He participated in a musical project called Miasma of Funk, engineering and doing drum programming for a track titled "The Law of Averages" on the 1997 compilation album The Glory of Destruction.

[1][3] Commenting on Riley's death to Rolling Stone, Albini called him "a fantastic musician and a critical part of the Chicago music scene.

He bridged the gap between raw enthusiasm and outstanding musicianship better than anybody else in our peer group and I always admired him for it", while Durango remarked "Many of my favorite Big Black memories involve Dave, including the riot he single-handedly started by taunting the audience at one of our shows in Australia.