User:Rfiction123/sandbox/Adam X

ADAM X

Adam X (born: August 16th, 1971) is an American DJ, producer, and rave culture icon (1). He is responsible for the second wave of techno (2) in the US alongside his brother, Frankie Bones, and is head of the Sonic Groove record label. Mitchell moved to Berlin in October 2004 (3).

Brooklyn-born Adam Mitchell (who later adopted the name Adam X) grew up on East 38th Street in Flatbush where he grew up with his brother, Frankie Bones, who is four years older (4). Growing up, his parents took him to roller discos (5) before his father was murdered in 1984 while driving a taxi (6). His brother began DJing electro music such as Kraftwerk, Man Parrish, and Strafe, which became Mitchell’s music foundation (7). Around this time, Mitchell immersed himself into graffiti culture under the name VEN and as a member of the legendary A.O.K. crew (8), thus he inspired and infuriated thousands of people with his art (9). By 1990, at the age of 19, MItchell was under surveillance by police for his graffiti (10) so he switched gears to work alongside his brother at America’s first all-techno record shop, Groove Records in Bensonhurst (11)—later named Sonic Groove when the store moved to Manhattan (12)—and began DJing in order to stay out of trouble (13).

Mitchell DJed his first gig to a thousand ravers in Los Angeles, September 1990 (14). Alongside Bones and Heather Heart, Mitchell muscled the New York City techno scene into existence alongside Lenny Dee and Joey Beltram (15). He threw his first party with Bones at a small apartment in Brooklyn and it was so successful that, in 1991, they soon began renting generators and setting up parties in industrial junkyards in Canarsie that Mitchell knew so well from his graffiti days (16).

Deemed Storm Raves by Bones, the parties grew to 1,500 attendees in Staten Island and up to 5,000 people on Maspeth Avenue in Queens by 1992 (17). Artists such as Keoki, Jimmy Crash, Sven Vath, Doc Martin and Ritchie Hawtin performed at these events (18). The final Storm Rave was on December 12, 1992 (19). On May 16, 2015 Red Bull Music Academy brought the Storm Rave back featuring sets by Mitchell, Bones, Heart, and Rob Gee (20).

Mitchell began producing with Crash in the early 1990s under the alias X-Crash (21). His music has been described as “hard acid and furious techno” in the 1990s before transitioning to a more EBM and industrial-based sound in the early 2000s (22). Inspired by Clock DVA’s “The Act,” Mitchell focused on harsher and darker soundscapes while others at the time played loop-based, minimal techno (23).

In 1995, Mitchell launched Sonic Groove Records (24) and has since released music by Rhys Fulber, Kevin Saunderson, Orphx, Rebekah, and Neil Landstrumm.

His aliases range from ADMX-71, a downtempo industrial project (25) to Traversable Wormhole, which focused on “moody, industrial-tinged and conceptually rigorous electronics” (26). Additionally, he was behind The Secret Initiative techno project that began in 2010 and whose identity wasn’t revealed until 2018 (27). He has released music on Peacefrog, Magnetic North, Sativa, L.I.E.S, Hospital Productions, and aufnahme + wiedergabe.

Mitchell continues to organize events and DJ around the world (28).