By: Cassandra Miller Category: MUSIC Date: 15.Apr.2014

A pale, petite woman dressed in black slides a black gift box across a lace runner to the other side of a kitchen table, where a young woman opens it and lifts out a vinyl album. Freeze frame block lettering announces ADULT.’s 2012 LP.

After opening a bigger black gift box (announcing a reissue of Resuscitation), the young woman opens a white box. An arm reaches up through red tissue paper and strangles her for 10 seconds, culminating in her fuzzy brown hair flopping over the box. The petite woman stands up from the table and walks down a redlit hallway with a tall, black-clad man. The video is at first minacious, and then chuckle-out-loud funny. The same is true of talking to the duo behind ADULT., Adam Lee Miller
and Nicola Kupernus, who star as the angels of death in the video, which they directed and produced.

Calling an hour after the scheduled interview time (the New York-based reporter compensating for a time change that didn’t exist). “It starts in Chicago,” Miller says over speakerphone from Detroit. Discomfort quickly fades into a friendly, thoughtful conversation about the perks of living in Detroit, how ADULT. got started and the duo hosting a grant-funded artist residency at their prairie-style home. “Over the holidays, we reworked our studio to make it more suitable for having a guest,” Miller says. This spring and summer as part of a grant the couple won, they will host six musicians, one at a time, for two-week sessions each to create a collaborative album titled Detroit House Guests. The project is funded by a grant from the Knight Arts Challenge Detroit, part of a national $9 million initiative in various cities to draw the best and most innovative ideas out of local organizations and individuals seeking to engage and enrich the community through the arts, according to the Knight Arts Challenge website.

The duo’s three-sentence proposal to get the grant was: “To build on the city’s musical legacy, the band ADULT. will invite a half-dozen international and U.S.-based musicians as ‘house guests’ to live with the band in Detroit for two weeks and collaborate. The project will work much like an artist residency program with musicians from a variety of musical and personal backgrounds and will culminate in an album that reflects the city’s people and landscape.”

The couple have spent six years restoring their home in New Center, three miles north of Detroit’s downtown. “We’ve got two Albert Kahn buildings,” Miller says of the historic and commercial neighborhood that was home to General Motors’ headquarters from 1923 to 1996.

Read more in the new issue of NO TOFU, out now.