After almost a year’s delay, Texan duo ELEVEN:ELEVEN have finally released their debut album ‘Through The Veil’.
Combining elements of Italo Disco, Hi-NRG and Electroclash with the feisty template of Terri Nunn’s BERLIN and the Mittel Europa romanticism of VISAGE, ELEVEN:ELEVEN deliver a melodic but edgy style of electronic dance music which doesn’t cause death by four-to-the-floor!
Fronted by the feline demure of Sicca and powered by the crisp electronic backing of Jake Childs, ELEVEN:ELEVEN have been described as the musical love child of GIORGIO MORODER and ADULT. The duo’s debut EP ‘Infection’, with exquisite songs like ‘Infection’, showcased the subtle dynamics of their futuristic disco friendly sound influenced by the likes of producers such as Bobby Orlando as well as the man named Giorgio.
The original promotional concept of ‘Through The Veil’ had been to the release a track one-at-a-time before culminating in a finished ten track album but after six were premiered, things went quiet while the duo were signed to Canadian label Cliché Musique, part of Universal Music.
It comes as a big surprise though after all the delays that the whole album has been given away as a free download… but what a freebie! The songs are uncluttered, and allowed space to breathe rather than just having the kitchen sink thrown in. Punching forth at the start is ‘Escape’ which combines atmosphere, danceability and emotion for a superb opener.
Taking on a more Eurocentric countenance with a hint of A-HA’s ‘Take On Me’ is ‘Essence’ although Sicca doesn’t try to attempt falsetto. With a moodier percussive outlook, creepier synths hook-in at a steadier pace on ‘Mesmerize’ with Sicca all haunted and exclaiming “You’re toxic, mesmerise me… I waste away”; it all gives ‘Through The Veil’ a kind of sexy gothic allure.
‘The Play’ explores bondage chic, a theme often referenced in ELEVEN:ELEVEN’s artwork. Feeling the need for speed, it is more frantic than the other numbers running through the core of ‘Through The Veil’. There’s plenty of highs and lows in its two minutes. The exploration continues on ‘The Chains’ and at four plus minutes, is the longest song on the album. Strangely, it does sound a little too long…
The synthetic seediness of ‘No Words’ is reminiscent of MISS KITTIN & THE HACKER but whereas Ms Herve would just speak, Sicca coos with a sultry allure… it actually makes a change to hear a singer on an electronic backing track like this rather than the expected deadpan monologue. Driven by an arpeggiated bassline and analogue drum machine clatter, ‘Little White Lies’ is rather divine with Sicca sounding quite seductively resigned over some great syncopation, club friendly without being overbearing.
‘Isolate’ and ‘Justified’ maintain the quality of the album and don’t veer too much away from the ‘Through The Veil’ template. But the best number comes last with the brilliantly sparkling title track which put quite simply, is just great angelic synthpop.
An impressive debut, the main noticeable trait of ‘Through The Veil’ other than its quality dance stance is that the songs are all short and sweet. There’s no unnecessary 20 inch dance mixes needed as the point can be made in less than three minutes… so DJs and dance acts, PLEASE LEARN!
At thirty-two minutes, ‘Through The Veil’ does not outstay its welcome and with its enjoyable ten variations of a theme, it showcases how there is subtle, crafted thinking within EDM from this promising electronic duo.
“Snarling electro-punk” is a good way of describing ADULT. as is “a snuff film version of Speak & Spell” which is what one keen observer said on ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s Facebook about their new album ‘The Way Things Fall’.
That has to be one of the quotes of the year and ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK wished it had thought of it!
The fear of the outside world and relationships, the fear of opening up your heart and it being destroyed; these sentiments have very much inspired the dystopian demeanor of ADULT.
First finding notoriety with the spiky cult favourite ‘Hand To Phone’ in 2001, Detroit based duo Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus’ last album was 2007’s ‘Why Bother?’ and for a while they didn’t. Suffering from burn out following a long world tour, they spent some time spent away from music.
But the couple reconvened to record possibly their most accessible album yet. While still retaining their distinctive edge and unsettlement, the album’s mutant love songs have a magnetic charm. This is particularly evident on the fabulous single ‘Idle (Second Thoughts)’, a vibrant electro hybrid of GINA X PERFORMANCE and SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES.
The next single ‘Tonight, We Fall’ and its description of feelings as tangible objects that “stick to you, stick to me” is strangely heartfelt. There’s also the aggrieved resignation of ‘Nothing Lasts’ accompanied by a plethora of detuned synthesizer sounds while the haunting techno pop of ‘New Frustration’ and the pulsating ‘At The End Of It All’ are among the album’s other key tracks.
With a penchant for playing in the dark, ADULT. live shows are enjoyably detached affairs, paring their music to its barest bones. The pair chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about their new album…
The new album is much more electronic than your last one?
NK: We made a pretty conscious effort to not use bass or guitar.
ALM: I don’t think so… one day we went in and thought “no guitar in any of these” – and we were writing so fast, we didn’t really pay attention after that.
NK: When we started writing the songs, we made a conscious effort to write songs which were more pop, more dance oriented. I think it’s because we’d had a break and the mood we were in – especially myself. At the end of making ‘Why Bother?’, I was very agitated and irritated and always p*ssed off.
ALM: It’s true.
NK: Yes, it’s definitely kinda true. I was just burnt out. For this record, I felt like I really wanted to enjoy listening to my own record. I think maybe that’s where not having the bass and guitar on there stems from – that desire to have more dance oriented tracks.
ALM: I agree with that.
Is there any kind of theme to this album, or are all the songs basically unrelated?
NK: Generally it was a lot more open. On the previous album for instance, our concepts were so specific you could literally say “this song is about this one woman and her history”. This new album was much more ambiguous, the emotions were stronger than the stories.
It’s interesting that you say the album is about fear of relationships: you have been in a relationship since the beginning of the band – is there something very personal in this album?
ALM: In a sense it’s about those kind of frustrations – that feeling where you’re so beat down, all you can do is try to figure out how to get yourself back up.
Do you both bring different qualities to the band? Do you have different strengths?
NK: I don’t know if we know the difference anymore. At this point in our lives and relationship together, it’s all so intertwined that it’s hard to separate. We’re working on a new video right now for the song ‘Tonight, We Fall’. Adam and I were building the set last night and we were like one machine, like an assembly line.
ALM: We started the band a year after we started dating. We don’t know…
NK: We don’t know how to operate any other way than making stuff together. Sometimes I think if we didn’t make stuff together, maybe we wouldn’t like each other. *laughs*
How does your live show compare to your recorded work?
NK: Basically, the songs have two levels. There is the very programmed analogue sequence type stuff and playable lines. The other half of the songs are backing tracks we create.
ALM: We translate the sound we have in the studio – where there’s a lot of vintage analogue gear, primarily – live, we travel with two newer analogue machines, and for what we can’t translate, we use a sampler. I play three keyboards on stage, Nicole sings and we have the backing machine. We’re no different to DEPECHE MODE really! *laughs*
When putting together a live show, how do you choose what to play?
NK: We’ve been a band since 1997, we have numerous 12 inch records, several albums and over 100 original songs – that’s a lot of music. We really work hard to pull things from all different eras of our sound and try to make it a cohesive, sort of hour long wave of music. We spend a lot of time considering how each song goes together, how the sequencing works and creating arcs in our set. It’s in no particular order as far as chronology goes.
ALM: We’ll ask ourselves how a song from 2000 correlates with a song we just wrote: “do they make sense together, do they sound good together?” Sometimes we’ll go back and rework a track, restructure or even re-record some older songs to sound more cohesive. It’s probably my least favourite thing about being in a band.
Do you enjoy playing live?
NK: As long as it hasn’t been a long tour, I enjoy the live experience. This is what I love about doing short tours like the one in Europe – we’re only doing 4 dates. That makes it more special, it doesn’t become a dog and pony show – which I sometimes think touring is. There’s nothing wrong with going on a tour, I’m just not that type of musician. I don’t enjoy playing one night after next after. I prefer making things as opposed to performing them.
You’re both established visual artists – does this become a part of your shows as well?
ALM: No, I think we’ve always had this standpoint for our live set that it’s music – it’s not a performance in the sense that it’s not theatre or theatrical. How elaborate it is depends on logistics: where we’re playing and the venue. We’ve had some very specific light shows, video backdrops, fog and things like that – but at some shows, we don’t have the control over that.
NK: I sometimes feel like we’re touring the whole dog and pony show. Some musicians like to incorporate dance, theatrical aspects – that’s not how we operate.
Do you connect with the crowd on stage, or prefer to stay aloof?
NK: It depends on night and mood, and if you want to reach out. Sometimes I just feel introverted and don’t want to say anything. If we could play in the dark and everyone in the room was also in the dark I think that would be ideal.
ALM: Maybe we’ll keep the lighting just at 10%. Maybe just have one flashlight. *laughs*
Would it be right to say you keep your art and music quite separate then? Has making a film given you the chance to combine the two in a way you’re comfortable with? How has it affected making the new album?
ALM: I know for myself, and I guess Nicole will agree, we both went to art school and we both do a lot of different disciplines. Nicole does photography and I’m painting: that’s what my majors were in. Making the film finally allowed us to express that in other media. Because of that, since we started writing again, our music has become more pure – there’s less baggage. It didn’t have to be six things to us; it could just be one thing. We only had one album, one specific goal: to write great music.
NK: ‘Why Bother?’ had more of a complicated narrative and we thought it had to have a single overarching concept. Whereas, this album just feels a lot more energised and free.
Earlier albums seem to have been influenced by particular writers or philosophers: JG Ballard, Philip K Dick… does this album have any particular literary or philosophical influences?
NK: Sometimes in the past, our albums were very obviously influenced by writers like Ballard and PK Dick, but not this album. We’ve been writing in a very isolated space, away from influences.
ALM: Going back to the subject of reaching the audience, I don’t want to *not* reach people. I think we suffer from a particularly artistic temperament… existential angst.
Does the writing process prove to be cathartic?
NK: Yes it’s definitely helpful. When we wrote this record, it was a frenzied-feeling writing process. We would write one song and then start immediately on another. In the end you felt like it was never ending and had to say “that’s enough, shut it off”.
How do you write as a partnership – is it a democratic creative relationship?
ALM: It’s different with every record. We can easily comment on the new record.
NK: This was definitely a very democratic process. We generally agree on stuff, although not always, that’s for sure – sometimes we each had to fight for what we wanted.
One good practice we have is that if a track is not coming together quickly, we’ll leave each other for periods of time in the studio. Then we can each have a go at trying to figure it out.
ALM: This does two things – it lets you try embarrassing, stupid things; let’s you fail a lot without someone listening, going “that’s terrible”. Secondly, you then have an objective second person who you can show things. If you’ve been working on a bassline for three hours and you start to become really delusional, it’s great to have someone else going “it’s good” or “no it’s crap”. We’re good at not getting offended – I think that’s from art school – you’re trained to go through the process of critique.
After making a film, why did you decide to make another album? Do you still believe in the album format?
NK: We didn’t want to make another album.
ALM: We didn’t intend to.
NK: People listen to music in a totally different context now, where you buy the song you want, so what is the importance of the album? We wrote fourteen songs and ten are on there…
ALM: …or nine. It just felt like an album. It felt like these songs had to go together for our own brains, regardless of how someone else wants to listen to them. There was a period of time where I worried a little too much about other people. When I go to iTunes, I buy albums… I don’t shuffle, I listen to them in order, and I’m glad about that. I don’t care if someone only likes one song or puts the album on shuffle – none of that. That’s their business. I think about what I’m into. I’ve always operated that way and it works for me. I figure if I like it, there’s a good chance other people might be into it as well.
Did you feel yourselves part of a scene at all when you began, when electroclash was becoming fashionable? Do you listen to what sounds are around in electronic pop now?
NK: I don’t know if we’re influenced by what’s going on.
ALM: I think we used to not be and that’s what happened to us. We got too wrapped up in how the outside world reacted. We’re much better as isolated people.
NK: I do think we work better when isolated.
ALM: We talk about what we did, and did very publically. We pushed all of our limits. We wanted to see how far north, south, east and west we could go and a few times we crossed our own limits. I have no regrets about that, how we grew as artists.
What we’re making now is a record that could only have been made with experience. We know our limits now, we’ve done all of our experimentation. We know what we like and enjoy and that’s the record we made.
NK: We’re conscious of certain things that we were unhappy with in the past – even down to playing live shows. I don’t want to burn out again.
You say you’ve finished experimenting – is there a danger you could become too comfortable and lose the desire to innovate?
ALM and NK: Yeah, that could happen.
ALM: I don’t care if I’m complacent or not.
NK: I doubt it, knowing our personalities.
ALM: We’re not going to say anything but we’ve thought about what we’ll do if we make another album.
NK: Maybe after this we won’t be in the mood to write another album – or maybe we will feel inspired. I don’t know.
ALM: We had a long meeting about what we liked and didn’t like about the music industry and made very specific outline of traps and snares not to fall into again.
NK: To operate on a certain scale in the music world doesn’t work for us.
ALM: A good example, for instance, is how we had a very clear meeting with our label Ghostly saying “don’t work with us if you expect us to do an exhausting tour for this album. Don’t put it out if that’s what you expect”. Maybe it’s not what they expect, maybe it’s expectations you put on yourself. Another example, we tried being a three piece band for one album and then stopped. We’re still all really good friends but it just wasn’t who we are. This is more like an outgrowth… like an art project – it’s ours. It doesn’t work if we bring in someone else.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to ADULT.
Special thanks to Debbie Ball at Create Spark
‘The Way Things Fall’ is released by Ghostly International on CD, download and vinyl
ADULT. – the sonic outlet for musician/film maker Adam Lee Miller and vocalist / photographer / artist Nicola Kuperus – formed in 1998 in Detroit.
Long after the first flush of Detroit techno, and slightly before the electroclash boom, Kuperus and Miller were following a decidedly different trajectory.
A cyborgian Siouxsie Sioux meets Lene Lovich set to the sound of malfunctioning hospital machinery, the duo’s sonic and lyrical vistas have been, from the very beginning, heavy with foreboding and paranoia.
They flavour their electro with a clinical disorientation and a tendency towards misanthropy: brought up in an environment in which financial crisis followed cold war and added surveillance to state violence. ADULT. channel this mistrust and isolation, adding an Argento-like theatricality to produce a sound that is uniquely and excitingly their own although no-one could deny there are flashes of influence, particularly KRAFTWERK and Metamatic period JOHN FOXX. In a 2003 interview Miller confirmed: “We think of what we are doing as social commentary. It’s about anxiety and social disorder. I know that John Foxx and Tubeway Army are the first records that I bought that put me on this path that I am still on sixteen years later.”
No matter how many new acts emerge from the fertile soil laid in the Electroclash years, ADULT.’s musical output – all 15 years of it so far – mine a particular seam few other artists attempt. Alienation and tension are far less likely to get a band commercial reward, and for ADULT. this has meant never attaining the recognition that artists like LADYTRON and MISS KITTIN have enjoyed – yet, it has kept their output focussed, potent and allowed ADULT to remain uncompromised in their ideas. Their interest in French existentialism, horror films and Ballard-like storytelling in photography perhaps count towards this ability to create an unsettlingly original sound – or perhaps it is really down to Kuperus’ utterly distinctive tones.
‘The Way Things Fall’ is their first in 5 years, following – ironically – their 2007 album ‘Why Bother?’. We are, of course, glad they did bother to return to music after spending the interstitial years making film. The album is undeniably ADULT. : the subject matter as nihilistic and clever as one could expect, a dreamscape of surgical precision, the entropy of a Peter Greenaway film and the sonic palette composed almost entirely of synthetics which SOUND synthetic.
There’s no hearkening to warmth or organic oscillations here, and it is all the more effective for it. On this album, however, melodic influences creep into ADULT’s detuned, minimalist arrangements, with some great arpeggiated glimmering, luring us in.
The first track, ‘Heartbreak’ opens the album with a classic ADULT. topic and feel – love, futility, disappointment. It sets the scene with an edgy, tense atmosphere, and Kuperus exercising her full Siouxsie/Lovich dramatic range. You can hear the echoes of punk’s angry young women (and post-punks, for that matter) in her vocal delivery.
It’s followed by ‘Idle (Second Thoughts)’, which continues the Siouxsie theme tangentially by sounding just a little like ‘Hong Kong Garden’ or perhaps a lost YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA track. It’s crystalline and diamond-bright, and if you get no further into this album, listening to ‘Heartbreak’ and ‘Idle’ will tell you much of the must-knows about ADULT: minimalism meets post-punk with a new-found flirtation with bright melodies, all the while retaining a sense of the sinister, the uneasy.
Fourth track ‘New Frustration’ seems the obvious dancefloor winner of this album, with deeper grooves pushing the song forward whilst Kuperus questions low and insistently: catchy and hypnotic. ‘Love Lies’ sees ADULT. returning to the surgical suite, with a slower insistent heart-beat bleep and tense detuned synth to create a clinical despondence, whilst Kuperus drawls in an emotionless monotone “Love lies… it’s no surprise”. ‘Tonight, We Fall’ and ‘At The End Of It All’ are again typical, vintage ADULT. – sinister, dramatic, and claustrophobic, insistent, frantic and full of sci-fi synth-drama.
Patience has its rewards – as does pressing shuffle – as towards the end of the album there are two gems awaiting appreciation. After the storm comes the calm, eerie quiet.
‘A Day Like Forever’ shows our ADULT.s in a different mood; a strangely slow, spacious, funereal drama – uneasy and effective. Kuperus’ voice is affected and unsettling, seeming to treat the staccato and the lengthy similarly, slightly, deliberately, out of tune and hollow.
The album’s unofficial closer is ‘We Will Rest’, followed only by a short almost Depeche-worthy instrumental in ‘Rise & Fall’.
‘We Will Rest’ sees Kuperus’s lyrical insistence giving way to the sonic landscape, which includes a luxuriant rising arpeggio and textural noise. It would have been nice to see this track a little further up the list, as it contrasts effectively with the rest of the album. Kuperus speaks the lyrics, smothered by heavy reverb and delay. Here she doesn’t cut icily through the sonic texture, but is part of it, increasing effectively the atmosphere of melancholy and disorientation. A particular favourite, and a horror soundtrack awaiting its filmic partner. ‘Rise & Fall’ is short, metallic and thoughtful – perhaps channelling an industrialised Martin Gore instrumental.
‘The Way Things Fall’ could be the best entry point a new ADULT. fan could have although listening to their most famous track ‘Hand To Phone’ is essential, too. This reviewer loves ‘The Way Things Fall’ and hopes you can dig deep to your inner Sartre, Ballard and Lovich to love it too.
‘The Way Things Fall’ is released on 13th May by Ghostly International in the UK and Europe as a CD and download. It can be heard on an audio stream at The Fader
ADULT. live dates include: London XOYO (15th May), Berlin Festsaal Kreuzberg (16th May), Brussels Magasin 4 (18th May), Amsterdam Indiestat Paradiso (20th May)
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. Adam and I were building the set last night and we were like one machine, like an assembly line.
How do you write as a partnership – is it a democratic creative relationship?
is released by Ghostly International on CD, download and vinyl
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