Ian Allen, a key member of Bay Area culture-jammers Negativland from 1981 to 1987, died on Saturday from what the band is calling “unexpected complications and infections” following a heart-valve replacement surgery at Stanford Hospital in California, according to an announcement this morning on the group’s Facebook page. He was 56.
The post says Allen’s “impact, inspiration, and influence on the group is impossible to overestimate. There would be no group as we know it today … without him.”
According to the band, Allen struggled with health issues his whole life, part of what led to his withdrawal from the band a few years prior to its infamous U2 dust-up.
Read Negativland’s full statement about Ian Allen below:
Ian Allen Dec. 15, 1958 – January 17, 2015
Past Negativland member, and long time friend of the group, Ian Allen, died on Jan. 17, 2015 from unexpected complications and infections following heart valve replacement surgery at Stanford Hospital in California. We are extremely shocked and saddened by this news. He was with dear friends of his at the time of his death, and is survived by his brother, Pyke Allen.
Ian was very active with Negativland from 1981 to about 1987, and his impact, inspiration, and influence on the group is impossible to overestimate. There would be no group as we know it today, no Over The Edge radio show, no “culture jamming” and no “A Big 10-8 Place” LP without him.
Ian struggled with various serious health issues his entire adult life, and while they lead to his gradual withdrawal from active participation with the group by the late 80s, he remained a good friend and supporter, attending all of our live shows whenever we performed in the SF Bay Area. With Ian’s blessings we were thrilled to recently revive and rework an early 80s unfinished tape loop based work of his called “Like Cattle Act,” and made it a part of our current live set. He was part of creating Negativland’s “points” LP in 1981, introducing to the rest of us, on the track BABAC D’BABC, the idea of using tape splicing not just as a way to make loops and connect tracks, but as a compositional tool unto itself. This revelation led to the exploration of this technique full-on in 1983s “A Big 10-8 Place,” and he played a major role in the creation of that record and its unique packaging. He was instrumental in helping to create and articulate the groups idea of “culture jamming,” and pushed the group into making “A Big 10-8 Place,” our first ever concept LP. From then on that was the standard for us, and nearly every single Negativland release, up to and including our current one, “It’s All In Your Head,” has been a concept project. He came up with the idea of making four-channel tape loops ( as we couldn’t afford early expensive samplers back then) and this became a technique that was used extensively on 1987s “Escape From Noise.” Ian was obsessed with the number 17, which is why it appears in various ways on so many Negativland projects and texts in the 80s and 90s (please note the day he died!). In the summer of 1981 he introduced the current group members to radio DJ (and now long time Negativland member) Don Joyce, and thus our weekly audio collage radio show Over The Edge was born, still broadcasting to this day.
For those who knew him, he was a visionary, magical, impish, playful and eccentric thinker, a true genius who was light years ahead of all of us with his ideas about art, sound, society, and technology. He will be dearly missed.
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Negativland gives away ‘U2’ multi-track master, invites fans to remix infamous single
- Casey Kasem’s greatest hit: Negativland and ‘the letter U and the numeral 2’
We’ve attempted to utilize, but it really doesn’t is effective in any respect.
Sad to hear. Longtime Negativland fan here, but I did not discover their work until after Allen’s time with the group. I’ve gone back to catch up on what I missed, but I still have yet to hear (or own) the first two albums.
“A Big 10-8 Place” is one of my all-time favorite “weird” albums.
Very sad. I remember being in SF Tower Records in 1980 and seeing these crazy records with hand cut collages on them, each one hand made. There was of course a write up on it, and the clerk assured us if we liked the Residents… Needless to say we loved it.
Stanford is horrible. Jon Anderson got his infection there, and a friend of mine went in for back surgery, and has been dying from the infection he got there for years. That building should be torn down. It’s a sick building.