H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist best known for gifting the world countless nightmares with his unsettling designs for the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien, has died at the age of 74 from injuries he suffered from a fall.
Giger's "biomechanical" works explore the uneasy relationship between man and machine, often to erotic and/or deeply disturbing effect. There's an almost distressing fluidity to the ways his dark shapes morph from the organic into the mechanical, expressing what some see as a bleak future in which man has become inextricably trapped in an emotionless, automated world of his own creation.
In addition to his contributions to Alien, Giger is also well-known as a creator of album artwork, having created covers for Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Danzig, Deborah Harry, Carcass, Celtic Frost and others. His most infamous contribution to music culture was a poster included in the Dead Kennedys' Frankenchrist album, "Landscape XX"; its phallic connotations spurred an obscenity trial in the mid-'80s.