Adam X and Monolith: Los Angeles, CA 11-25-05

There wasn’t a lot happening onstage Friday night when Monolith played Das Bunker: just Eric Van Wonterghem, bedecked in sunglasses, twiddling knobs and triggering samples on an Apple PowerBook. Thankfully, the music was more interesting than the stage show, with lots of heavy bass and rhythmic distortion. Van Wonterghem’s set focused mostly on newer material from Monolith’s most recent album “15 Seconds,” starting off with a remix of “Biosphere” and also featuring a new version of “Shot!” that dispensed with most of the vocal samples in favor of extended drum machine breakdowns.

Surprisingly, techno DJ turned EBM producer Adam X was more interesting as a live performer than he is on CD. Although the setup was basically the same as Monolith’s – just a guy with a sequencer, sampler and a laptop computer – Adam X actually has something of a live presence. He performed a number of tracks that had at least minimal vocals, even if they just consisted of his barking phrases like “Android!” into a reverb-enhanced microphone, but his various facial contortions made even instrumental tracks like “Phobic” fun to watch; X variously wrinkles his forehead or sticks his tongue out when he’s deeply concentrating on his gear. His particular brand of house-meets-EBM really emphasizes the dance floor rather than the man on stage, though, and the regular Das Bunker crowd, augmented by a contingent of ravers from the Droid Behavior crew (who co-presented this event with Das Bunker), made this clear, dispersing throughout the venue to get their groove on instead of crowding the stage. Despite the fact that it was the day after Thanksgiving, Das Bunker managed to attract a decent crowd, and electronic music fans that were able to rouse themselves from turkey-induced stupors had a great opportunity to sweat off some of that pumpkin pie.

For more information on these artists, visit them online at www.monolith.cd and www.djadamx.com.