Architect: Los Angeles, CA 4-21-05

"Eclectic" is one polite description for Architect's show at Das Bunker; a less charitable term might be "haphazard." While Daniel Myer is known for the cool, electronic precision that marks the studio work of both Haujobb and solo projects like this one, in the live setting things seemed a lot less clinical and a lot more random. In addition to occasional technical difficulties, even the music itself was much more random than the experimental techno ambient of The Analysis Of Noise Trading, the most recent Architect album. Though things started off more or less as expected, with slowly building ambient tones that eventually climaxed in a mid-tempo breakbeat rhythm, even the more recognizable tracks were drastically altered in unpredictable ways for the show; "Speed O.J.," for example, incorporated a recognizable sample from Snap's '90s dance one-hit-wonder "The Power." The rest of Myer's set ran the gamut from abstract hip-hop beats to spoken word, even incorporating a hilarious VNV Nation impression while Manufactura's Karloz M. took over the gear management, before Myer finally gave in to the catcalls of audience members to "Play some Haujobb already" and closed the night with "The Noise Institute," from 2003's Vertical Theory. Though the audience was left rather bemused by the whole affair, the performance made up for its inconsistency with sheer entertainment value, and watching Myer caper about the stage and trade witty barbs with fans was more interesting than watching him push buttons on his laptop would've been, anyway.

Visit the club at www.dasbunker.org and Architect's page on MySpace at https://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=20454681 for more information.