Mike Kelley — Plato's Cave, Rothko's Chapel, Lincoln's Profile (with Sonic Youth) / The Peristaltic Airwaves, Compound Annex, 2012

2-CD set in jewel case with booklet. 14 × 12 cm. Published by Compound Annex Records, Los Angeles, 2012. Compound #38, #39.

Condition: New old stock. Factory sealed.

An increasingly uncommon document of Mike Kelley's sound and performance practice, issued shortly after the artist's death in January 2012. While not rare in the strict bibliographic sense, copies appear only intermittently on the secondary market and are collected by those interested in the intersections of contemporary art, performance, experimental music, and Sonic Youth-related material.

Disc One: Plato's Cave, Rothko's Chapel, Lincoln's Profile [55:36]
Recorded live at Artists Space, New York, December 5, 1986. With Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley), Molly Cleator, and Adam Rudolph on didgeridoo. Assisted by Tony Oursler, Mary Jones, and Jennifer Bolande. Recorded by Carole Parkinson.

Disc Two: The Peristaltic Airwaves [38:19]
Performed live on KPFK Radio, September 30, 1986. With Jack Skelley and Nic Greene, guitars; Dave Childs, drums; Nancy Evans, voice and horn. Co-produced by High Performance Magazine and Jacki Apple for Soundings on KPFK Pacifica Radio.

Both works were previously available only in limited cassette form before being digitally remastered and reissued by Compound Annex in 2012. The title connects several recurring concerns in Kelley's practice — philosophy, psychology, popular culture, mythology, and institutional critique — while the involvement of Sonic Youth places the recording within the fertile overlap between the downtown New York art and experimental music scenes of the mid-1980s.

Within The New Rare object-register, the set operates as both artwork and record. Not merely a music release, it functions as retained evidence of a performance that otherwise survives only in fragments. The performance is gone; the recording remains.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price. Carefully packed and shipped boxed.