It’s fair to say that ADULT. are pretty much an institution. The Detroit duo, consisting of Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller, spent the 90s working within the then-nascent electroclash genre and the years since then running from it (and from genre tags in general) but, with few exceptions, their work has always been the product of those same two minds. Detroit House Guests, though, marks a massive leap from that template. The plan was simple enough – invite a handful of select artists to live with them in their Detroit home to eat, sleep, chill and collaborate – but the results are a wholly cohesive yet eclectically oppressive record. With the assistance of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (a.k.a. Lichens), Michael Gira (Swans), Shannon Funchess (Light Asylum), Lun*na Menoh (Seksu Roba), Douglas J McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) and Dorit Chrysler, they have created a unique and uncategorisable work, so naturally we caught up with Kuperus and Miller to find out the trials and tribulations of such an intimate undertaking.
The new album is a really interesting project. How did this work come about?
Nicola: We’re a touring band. Through the years we’ve hosted a lot of bands at our house, giving them a place to crash after a show, so we always thought it would be cool to have someone stay longer than one night and actually work together, make some songs. We’d had this idea for quite a while but it’s also very expensive to do, especially given the fact that it’s very hard to sell records these days and accrue any money. Basically this foundation came to Detroit, the Knight Foundation, and we thought, “Let’s propose this idea. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll do it but it never hurts to try, right?” Well, they really liked the idea so that’s kind of how it all came together. They gave us funding to do the project. It was really just to have the experience; there was no requirement to actually have a finished record so there was a lot of freedom to work and I think that’s why the record is so interesting – there wasn’t this pressure, or this preciousness.
Adam: I don’t think this record could exist without the Foundation. If this record was made in the past, when records actually made money, you would have had the pressure of your record company, so this was a zero-pressure situation.
Was there any trepidation going into this, not just about inviting outsiders into your home but also into your way of working?
Adam: yeah, it was very intimidating. I’m glad you asked that as no-one has thus far. It’s a major risk…
Nicola: You’re very vulnerable because it is your home.
Adam: What if you didn’t get along with somebody? What if you had a huge fight? What if…
Nicola: What if they really didn’t like the sheets on their bed?
Adam: What if they were messy? Of course, everybody we picked had to have toured and travelled a lot because touring musicians really know how to adapt quickly to their environment. Dorit Chrysler was ready to work within four hours! Everybody was great to work with.
Was there a common process with how you went about working with the people involved or was there a sense of changing up to match each different personality?
Adam: Everybody was different and everything had its own challenges. Like, the airline lost Robert Lowe’s modular – well, he had his modular but not all the patch cords and power cords.
Nicola: They lost it for three days.
Adam: So that was a challenge…
Nicola: …to be able to do the work but not be able to hear his modular.
Adam: His voice and his modular are one. They really work as one. It’s man-machine like you’ve never seen before so he really needed it.
Nicola: So that process, we actually started by watching a Buñuel film.
Which one?
Nicola: The Exterminating Angel.
Adam: Actually, the lyrics in “This Situation” are from the English translation of that film.
Are there any overall themes running through the album except for the concept itself?
Adam: No, we didn’t really start out thinking that this would be a concept album. I think everything naturally has quite a solid thread running between it. Nicola wrote a lot of the lyrics. Other than Douglas…
Nicola: …Douglas and Michael.
Adam: But everyone else was happy to work with Nicola’s lyrics.
Nicola: I think that helps to tie everything together.
“…EDM is just turning into this big ‘bro’ culture. It’s not for weirdos. It’s like a marketing tool, which I think is interesting.”
I was curious about how you found working with Robert. He was the first name that caught my eye with this project and he’s such an incredible musician and artist.
Nicola: Exactly, and it’s funny because we’ve known Robert for quite a while. We’ve always thought he’s incredible but one requirement Adam and I set for the record was before we asked anybody – because we had to ask six people to invite; that’s the number we wanted – we had to discuss it with one another. We had to agree on the artists before we asked them. We were playing a festival in Belgium and Robert was playing with OM before we went on and we were standing in the wings of the stage, watching Robert perform and the performance was so mind-bending, hair-raising… you’re just watching him let these crazy vocals come out of his mouth and he’s contorting his hands as he’s modulating, so the minute he came off stage, I was like, “You have to come to Detroit! You have to do this project with us!” Obviously, Adam was in agreement but it was pretty funny. Working with everybody was a great way to grow and learn. Collaboration really is something that we should all take note of on the odd occasion.
Is that urge to collaborate outside of the two of you something that you get pangs for quite frequently?
Nicola: We just came up with this idea to do this project but really, we’ve never collaborated before. We had a member in ADULT. for a year but I don’t know how good at collaborating we really are, since we are two and that person was one so it’s not really a democracy. Adam and I are generally on the same page.
Adam: But that was with the one member of the band. I think having these collaborators in our home made us hosts, not only to their comfort outside of the studio but also in the studio. We really were very open to the collaborative process.
Nicola: Less controlling than we normally are. I would also say, interestingly enough, because we also do performative work, and installations and sculpture, we have a visual process that after doing this House Guests project, really opened our eyes up to maybe collaborating more with other artists and performers, so that’s been a big reward as well.
Two things that are quite strongly associated with your work are your location, Detroit, and this sense of tension and anxiety. Do you feel that you were able to retain both of those aspects with this album despite bringing others into the mix?
Nicola: I think so. I think that string is inherently in us but also, I think the artists we picked all share that bleak humour or anxiety for the most part. Also, I think part of the importance of actually having these artists come to our home as opposed to like how a lot of people might do collaborative projects, via the internet, is that it was important for these people to be here in Detroit and take a walk to the party store or wherever, go to the Motown Museum or the DIA, because how does that environment affect the music that’s being made?
Adam: I think one way this album has tension that’s still there, but completely different from how we’ve done it in the past is, like we said earlier, being nervous about when these people arrived. The majority of the songs are slower tempos than we’ve ever done before. One song’s 92 beats per minute, a lot of them are much slower than normal, because I think we were already tense when we started writing and so we naturally went to these slower tempos to make it a bit less tense. I think when you listen to this record there’s a tension in the slow beats, something we’ve never examined before.
A different form of anxiety, basically.
Adam: I think one of the most tense songs is “Enter The Fray” with Dorit Chrysler, and that’s the one at 92 beats per minute. There’s this trudge, this… I don’t know how to describe it, but when I hear that song it’s like I’m waiting for something to snap.
“I think one way this album has tension that’s still there, but completely different from how we’ve done it in the past is, like we said earlier, being nervous about when these people arrived. The majority of the songs are slower tempos than we’ve ever done before.”
How long did each of the ‘sessions’, for want of a better term, last? Did you have an intention of giving equal amounts of time to balance it out?
Nicola: The artists could stay for as long as three weeks, so it was kind of at everyone’s discretion and also schedule.
Adam: But every artist works differently. Some artists really work in fast, short time periods and then want to take a break. Other artists could sit there an entire day – like 10, 12 hours.
Nicola: Robert’s a really good example of that. Actually, almost everybody was pretty endurance-based.
Adam: It was our job to flex and facilitate not only how they were comfortable but also, we wanted the challenge of morphing our habits into theirs.
What are your own habits? Are you like Robert in that you’ll go for these marathon endurance sessions?
Nicola: Yeah. It’s amazing because you’ll suddenly realise. “Wait, 14 hours!? How did that happen?” I think it’s just listening to the same loop and not going completely mad for 14 hours!
Speaking as an outsider, it seems like Detroit has undergone major changes in recent years. How different do you think this record might have sounded had it been made in the Detroit of 10 or 15 years ago?
Adam: We still live in an area that hasn’t changed much so 10 years ago, I don’t think that would have made much difference, but 10 years from now, I think that will.
Nicola: Well…
Adam: It’s creeping up around us.
Nicola: Where we live, there’s no fancy coffee shop to go to or lunch places. There’s nothing very luxurious but in two years, there will be a fancy place to go get a sandwich, so that would certainly affect the record. But Detroit is massive.
Speaking more in an overall sense of the city, how has the city changed in terms of its music? Detroit always seems to have been defined by a handful of scenes that you seem to have slotted between.
Adam: That’s interesting… the music scene 10 years ago, that would have been…
Nicola: Well, 10 years ago, we would still have been running our record label. I don’t know but the whole culture of music has been changing in general. We were just down in Miami and they have this Winter Music Conference, and part of it is called Ultra, and we played that in 2002 or 2003 and they would never have us play that now, because EDM is just turning into this big ‘bro’ culture. It’s not for weirdos. It’s like a marketing tool, which I think is interesting.
On the other hand, you’ve seen a rise in things like Moogfest and bands like S U R V I V E starting to get wider recognition. Do you think you’ve found more of a natural home within that scene?
Nicola: Well, Moog synthesisers themselves have a sound palette that’s more geared towards outsider culture.
Adam: Moog has been very supportive of us. We played the last few Moogfests and we were going to play this year, but the album came out too late.
Nicola: But certainly, you go to that festival and it’s amazing. These are our people!
Speaking of that, how are you feeling about trying to tour this album?
Nicola: It’s obviously very complicated, and we’re not a huge band so we don’t have the support or machine in place to do that, so we’ll have to see what we can pull together. We did just play in Miami and we had Shannon Funchess from Light Asylum come down and that was really great. It was fun because we said, “Why don’t you just do the Douglas McCarthy tracks too?” They both share a similar vocal aesthetic so she played his songs as well and it was awesome. We just have to get creative.
Adam: That one just worked out because the promoter asked us to play and we asked to have Shannon put on the bill as a DJ and then she could sing with us, but logistics-wise, it’s only going to work once in a while when promoters are open to it. It’s going to be way easier in America than overseas as everyone lives in the US.
How much of a difference does it make, playing the US versus over here? For example, I know Germany has always taken to you very well.
Nicola: It’s really just city to city. It’s based more on the energy, I suppose. Where are you from?
Glasgow, in Scotland.
Nicola: Right, that’s what I thought. For us, we love playing in Glasgow because I think we share this post-industrial, grey vibe. You go to Barcelona and it’s a beautiful city. Who doesn’t want to be on the seaside, there’s the architecture, but people tend more towards, “Oh, let’s go have a glass of wine and relax.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it brings a different group of people to shows and different intensities. Mexico City is very intense, L.A. is surprisingly intense.
Adam: We’ve been doing this almost 20 years now, and cities will change. It depends on the audiences and how they change, but it’s not something where you can really write down the statistics.