Published
Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 13:40
- Brown was "one of the artists at the start of the Detroit electronic music scene," said fellow Direct Drive member Mike Agent X Clark.
Detroit DJ Mike Brown has died.
The news was announced yesterday, January 14th, on Instagram by the organisers of US festival Charivari Detroit. Artists such as DJ Minx, Marcellus Pittman and Alan Oldham have paid tribute in the comments. The cause of death hasn't been disclosed, though a GoFundMe page raising funds to cover Brown's cancer treatment was launched last June.
Brown was a member of Direct Drive, a pioneering pre-techno teenage DJ collective founded in Detroit in the late '70s. The crew was influential in forming Detroit's electronic music scene, inspiring the launch of Deep Space, a collective made up of Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Eddie Fowlkes. Brown continued to DJ across the city, performing at events such as Movement and Charivari in recent years.
"Mike Brown was one of the artists at the start of the Detroit electronic music scene," fellow Direct Drive member Mike Agent X Clark wrote on Brown's GoFundMe page. "Although I was too young to understand the scene, Mike had a very strong impression on me during those early days in the late '70s through early '80s. As I grew older, I was blessed to collaborate with him and he has become a very dear friend. He is what you would call the quiet, cool one. Glad to know him and call him my older brother."
Read Charivari Detroit's post in full.