Since their 1998 inception, Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller, collectively known as ADULT., have never shied away from unsettling subject matter. And with the foreboding new single “Have I Started at the End” (taken from their latest album Perception is/as/of Deception) they now seem to have effortlessly slid over into the prophetic.

With its ominous, Nizter Ebb-like beat and eerie, echo-drenched synths, it bears a whiff of the quasi-apocalyptic. And as Nicola’s spectral howl entreats, “It is a dream / Slipping through my fingers / Come closer / Have I started at the end?,” you can’t help but wonder what she knew before we knew it.

As it turns out, they also borrow a line from Goethe—”We only see what we know”—whose involvement in the 18th Century Sturm und Drang literary movement marked him out as someone who decisively kicked against the tyranny of “rationality.”

 

 

“When this song was written in a cool, dark, black basement in the middle of summer 2019,” Nicola recalls, “little did we know the lyrics would be completely relevant today…but would come to express a much different message than was initially intended. The unpreparedness of our government and their ‘wool-covered eyes.’ Their inability to look ahead. Their total stubbornness, may leave us all having to start over.”

Still and all, they hold out hope that it could at least be the “psychedelic dance anthem” that this moment is obviously calling for. And to be honest, we’re feeling a little bit better already.

(N.B. – The first 13 dates of their upcoming North American tour have been cancelled or postponed—but ADULT. are now scheduled to kick it off in New Orleans’ Gasa Gasa on May 19).