With
Perception Is/As/Of Deception
,
Adult.
remain masters of disorientation. As they did for their previous album
This Behavior
Nicola Kuperus
and
Adam Lee Miller
went to creative extremes to depict a world that seems to have shifted off its axis. Instead of sequestering themselves in a northern Michigan cabin, this time the duo stayed closer to home and made
Perception
in their windowless basement, which they transformed into a sensory deprivation chamber by painting it black. Creating, and then confronting, a void does seem to have heightened a few aspects of
's music. Instead of
's abrasive starkness, on
the duo find liminal spaces within its negative space. On "We Look Between Each Other,"
Kuperus
creates moire patterns with her overlapping vocals as she sings "We appear/We disappear" over jittery, lunging, quintessentially
beats and synths. The duo illustrate the album's motifs of suspicion, paranoia, and illusions brilliantly on "Have I Started at the End," a Moebius loop of unsettling imagery ("Yesterday, I appeared") set to a relentlessly whirring rhythm.
's concept and sound are so cohesive that, like seeing patterns emerge after staring at the dark for too long, the changes
Miller
introduce from track to track stand out even more. The duo add some drama and perverse pleasure to the album with the tumbling, primal beat of "Reconstruct the Construct" and the decadent yet ominous synths piled onto "Untroubled Mind." There's also more range to
' vocals than on some of
's other albums; while she's sharp-edged and anguished as ever on "Total Total Damage," which brings the album's concept front and center as she chants "perception is deception," on the existential vortex "Why Always Why," her voice takes on a sensuous quality that's arguably more startling. As always, the duo wring audacious sounds from their synths, whether they make them screech like robotic birds of prey on "Second Nature" or let them plummet and bounce around
as she snarls "I can't comprehend this culture!" on "Controlled By." A skillful balance of
's high concepts and kinetic rhythms,
reaffirms how the duo excel at finding creative ways to question society and art itself. ~ Heather Phares