Aaron Aites, creator and frontman of Iran, died in his sleep on Friday after a battle with kidney cancer. The news was confirmed by life partner and fellow filmmaker Audrey Ewell in an update on his GoFundMe page.
Aites started Iran in San Francisco in 1998. The band debuted in 2000 with a self-titled album. It would go on to release two more albums—2003's The Moon Boys and 2009's Dissolver. In 2009, Aites and Ewell directed the black metal documentary Until the Light Takes Us. In recent months, TV on the Radio, Thee Oh Sees, and several other artists auctioned off collectibles and played benefit shows to help cover Aites’ medical bills. Ewell wrote of her late partner:
"Aaron is gone. He died in his sleep, and he was not in pain. He battled so, so hard, was so brave, so loving, such a good man throughout. His brain was still fighting, but his body couldn't go any further. We could never quite catch up to it, no matter what we tried. And we tried so hard. I had hope until the very end. More importantly, so did he. You guys made that possible. Your kindness and generosity let us battle with all our might, with total focus. For those of us who live on without him, we have the comfort of knowing that we did absolutely everything we could."
