P038: Cabeza de Vaca – Adam X special

New York and techno legend Adam “X” Mitchell is the star of this week’s Cabeza de Vaca show on Scanner FM.

Adam X has a long, long history in the business that you can find out in more detail on the internet. The old Resident Advisor exchange has been archived and was an invaluable source of information, but there is some other video material still available that tells his story.

In this video he claims to have had a musical epiphany listening to Clock DVA’s “The Act” single originally from 1988 on the Interfisch label, in particular the vocal-less version on the B-side which is clearly part of the DNA of his sound. He also mentions fetishism and rhythmic noise which is also an important historical junction between taboo, power structures, industrial with noise that is somewhat clichéd if used now as a visual representation, but its hstorical importance in defining this type of is unquestionable, from the cover of Nurse With Wound's debut album to a host of other noise-related artwork.

The early days of Adam X certainly occur at a pivotal cultural juncture, from the tales of graffiti to the nascent undefined scene of the time. I am not a graffiti expert by any stretch of the imagination, and I imagine there is some better videos out there than this one that appears to capture something of the scene if authentic.

Adam X’s early music was also a classic blend of hard acid sounds and often made in collaboration with his musical collaborator Jimmy Crash. Here is an early high BPM  track from 1992.

Of the Traversable Wormhole stuff, there is a couple of mixes featuring the entire set of originals and/or remixes in different combinations too, including this old one. There is details of a new mix featuring the second set of five singles at Chris Liebing’s website  as well.

We cannot forget to mention his brother Frankie Bones as well, one of the other legends of the scene at the time and a great pioneer of the early electronic music culture like his brother. The first track is one of his earliest from 1989 and prophetically named "Call it techno" which would go on to be the name of a documentary charting the rise of the scene.






Of course it would be unthinkable if the brothers had never collaborated at least once:

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Clemens Neufeld	Wicked	Neufeld	2013
2	Mark Broom	Two	Coda Records / Token	2002 / 2013
3	Adam X	Deprogramming sequence	SCR Dark Series	2013
4	Traversable Wormhole	Universal Time (Dasha Rush Remix)	CLR	2013
5	Admx-71	The Winfield Spur	Sonic Groove Experiments	2012
6	Adam X	Navigational shortcut	Sonic Groove	2012
7	Josh Wink	Balls	Ovum	2013

Cabeza de Vaca Facebook

Scanner FM