For over two decades, the married duo of multi-disciplinary artists Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller have used the guise of electro as an outlet for asking the big questions: Why do I feel so bad? What the hell is your problem? What’s wrong with our society? Now on their eighth studio album as ADULT., Perception is/as/of Deception, Kuperus and Miller turn that focus inward. Over prickly basslines and harsh noise spirals, they shoot off defiant one-liners that sound deep, but their assertions often boil down to that oft-memed adage, “Real eyes realize real lies.”
Kuperus and Miller made a name for themselves during New York’s electroclash heyday, but the Detroit band have always sought to distance themselves from the term. (Miller said he felt “hate” for the signifier as early as 2002.) Still, one of the genre’s defining characteristics was a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, and the duo have retained some of that. On its face, lead single “Why Always Why” is a coarse interrogation of thoughtless participation in late-stage capitalism (“Don’t you know consuming doesn’t make you exist?”). But then you watch the music video, where the pair don ostentatious sunglasses and leather jackets in a shopping mall and Kuperus pushes a shopping cart through the toilet aisle at Home Depot, and you notice the smirk.
As a whole, Perception is more brash than 2018’s This Behavior. Save for the odd drone blast (“Controlled By”) or gliding lead synth (“Reconstruct the Construct”), drum machines and uneasily arpeggiating bass make up the bulk of each song, hearkening back to the early industrial minimalism of DAF or Front 242. The tools haven’t changed, but what they achieve with them has, if ever so slightly. “Second Nature” evokes the neon-drenched synthwave of Kavinsky and Carpenter Brut; the bruising saw wave undulations on “Untroubled Mind (Bring Me Back)” allow Kuperus the room to tap into her inner Ian Curtis.
Kuperus is the human anchor that grounds the machine-driven madness, her melodramatic sneers and off-kilter affectations piercing through layers of oppressive atmosphere. “Truth in speech, in gesture, delivery, they persuade you,” she chants on “Total Total Damage,” delivering a miniature summary of Manufacturing Consent. Distrust of authority and the reality-warping tendencies of those who hold it make up some of the central themes of the album; you can just picture Kuperus baring her teeth to spit on the powerful, flanked by grinding textures and shuddering hi-hats.
ADULT. have said they set out to create more of a philosophical record than an explicitly political declaration. In the artist statement for an accompanying exhibition, Kuperus and Miller namedrop Goethe, French existentialist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Aldous Huxley’s mescaline-fueled journal The Doors of Perception among the album’s esoteric influences. The result can be lyrics that rarely delve deeper than espousals of generalized wariness, like on “Have I Started At the End” where Kuperus intones, “We… we only see… we only see what we know.” She has a knack for telling stories just by looping memorable phrases. If you stop to notice, she’s just spouting slogans. But as long as the synths are clanging and the lighting is just right, ADULT. sound as dry and self-aware as ever.
Buy: Rough Trade
