02 February 2012

Mike Kelley (Destroy All Monsters), R.I.P. 1954-2012


The passing a great artist, non-musician and all-round conceptualist and aesthete. Founding member of proto-punk/noise/freak unit, Destroy All Monsters in the early 1970s in Detroit and non-music art group, The Poetics, and later went on to be a successful artist who has close association with Sonic Youth, culminating in the use of his art work on the Youth's album "Dirty" which was released in 1993. A key mentor and icon in the American underground and alternative scene and culture, and with his death, it seems like another nail into the coffin which seals the end of an era which was signposted by post hippie-burned out, punk nihilism and the democratisation and grassroot-ification of avantgarde culture from the mid 1970s to the 2000s. Go get a copy of the 3CD Destroy All Monsters collection and be shocked by its prophetic noises and sounds which pointed to so much of what we are listening today in the underground scenes and beyond.

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