The Animals

Tommy and I went to see the amazing Adam Stone in his concert/dance/theatre piece/video installation called The Animals the other night. Actually, the show is described on a promo postcard as "electro-bloody-death-pop", with a picture of a puppy munching out of a bloody dog bowl next to a severed human arm. Which pretty much says it all. I met Adam via my friend David Gammons, and he designed all the excellent video images for The Salt Girl. He is such a talented guy in so many ways: a singer, composer, musician, visual artist, and performer (and some other titles as well that I'm sure I'm missing...)

It was really quite an arresting event. Video projections on two large screens at either end of the space flowed with disparate, disturbing images that echoed the song lyrics. This was all edited and executed with Adam's painstaking attention to detail, of course.

The music itself is from Adam's album (can I still call it an "album"?) The Animals, which, btw, you can get on iTunes. It follows the unlucky adventures of the singer as he is devoured by a specific animal (a shark, a wolf, bees, a snake), only to re-emerge in the next song to be devoured again. Such is life! Adam never stopped moving during the show, he was just really a ball of energy: hanging from stair railings and balconies, jumping off high platforms that would have crippled me, all while singing his guts out. Now I understand why he has no body fat. He should author a work-out program next.

Adam was accompanied by three tireless female dancers, but I have to admit that my attention was riveted to either the expert video and/or Adam's own visceral performance. So, to me, they served more as a framing device (and a way to get the crowd dancing, which, of course, they did!)

Really great quiet moment at the end, with a bloody performer, and a live piano and a slow song (though it's really hard to achieve a subtle moment in Oberon, when someone at the bar is blending a mudslide and some other guy is fighting with one of the bouncers...)

One show only, unfortunately, but I'm sure more to follow...


you can find out more about Adam at http://www.iamadamstone.com/