A Place To Bury Strangers interview: “This is the best version of A Place To Bury Strangers yet”
Oliver Ackermann on the band, the album, the sleeve – and those UK shows
A Place To Bury Strangers, the US-based noise/shoegaze experimentalists, hit the shores of Britain today for a sold out Shacklewell Arms in (September 23), followed by the first of a two night residency at Number90 in Hackney Wick, starting with one of the Sonic Cathedral label’s 20th anniversary shows with Mildred Maude and Simon Scott from Slowdive’s new solo project Three Quarter Skies in support.
The show will include a live interactive demo of the limited edition album sleeve of Synthesizer, which can be built into a multi-trigger oscillator.
We grabbed frontman Oliver Ackermann to tell us more…
Hi Oliver and thanks for your time…. First of all, can you tell us where you are right now, and what kind of day you’re having… Been anywhere already or going anywhere interesting later?
We are in Calais about to be heading through the chunnel to the UK tomorrow. Already played Vicefest last night in Groningen with some wild bands including The Northern Boys / Lander & Adriaan. Just a night of recovery tonight but the first show of the tour was epic. It’s our first tour with this drummer Sarah Wilson and she was so wicked last night, this is the best version of A Place To Bury Strangers yet.
You’re about to visit the UK for some more shows, one of which helps Sonic Cathedral celebrate 20 years of existence – quite a milestone… What have you got in store for the show at Number90 on the 24th September?
I am so psyched they asked us to play this. Our first show in London years ago was for Sonic Cathedral so this is coming around full circle. I’m going to be doing a demo of our new album cover that can be built into a Synthesizer and we will be playing some tracks we have never played before that are finally doing something I have always wanted to do but we never had the guts to do. I can’t tell you what that is so you’ll just have to be there to find out.
How are the UK audiences compared to other places in the world? Anything you make a point of doing/playing when you’re here?
I think our music is very based in a lot of music that comes from the UK so musically it feels like home and the people really get it and go wild. We just always try to go out and live like the people do and that is top notch.
So the album Synthesizer – or at least the sleeve – is also an actual synthesizer – tell us more… What gave you the idea?
The cover of the record is a circuit board and if you populate it with all the parts and solder them all in you can build a super wild and experimental synthesizer that can transform your guitar into multiple oscillators, be beat like a drum or triggered or formed by the knobs. It’s wild. I’ve been building so many crazy effects and synthesizers over years, I’d finally become comfortable to make a synthesizer that has such a huge amount of interaction it seemed to be time to finally share it with the world. And even if you dont want to build it into a synth it looks sick.
“Synthesizer is a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community” – again, tell us more…
A lot of the songs on the record were formed very spontaneously and with the excitement of this new beginning of the current lineup. As I get to work with more and more people there are always so many stories and different things to explore. This record has samples made from field recorders capturing real life transformed into waves of sound / drum beats and the sounds of our travels.
We gather it’s also a more collaborative album – who else was involved and what did their involvement bring?
The new band members John and Sandra Fedowitz are really who I’m talking about there and it was a really great thing for me to be working with people who I connected with so directly. They were really supportive and trying to push whatever narratives we came up with as far as they could go. I suggest everyone work with good friends.
The shoegaze sound – for want of a better term – has had a real revival of late. Any ideas why?
For me so much of that music is absolutely stunning and incredible and it really wasn’t maintained with many mainstream bands for a while but now there are more and more bands that have been influenced by this music. I also feel like there is something really delicate as well as other worldly about shoegaze music that doesn’t totally jump out like pop or rock or something so it really takes a while for people to discover it. Its blurry nature isn’t obviously good for a soap commercial.
And what else are you up to musically at the moment? What are you hearing that’s inspiring you? Any more live or release action we should know about?
I’ve been working on running our label Dedstrange and we’ve got some amazing band releases coming out right now, namely Data Animal from Germany, Goblin Daycare from Turkey, and Eazyhead from the Philippines. Those bands are sick and there is also a really cool darkwave/goth scene developing all over the world at the moment that is truly daring and I am loving it. We’ve got more tracks about to drop as well as Synthesizer the record in October. These shows we’re playing are the best we’ve ever done and it’s bringing everything we’ve ever done into one place for something totally epic that might just be too much to handle. There’s only one way to find out.
APTBS release their new album Synthesizer on the October 4 via Dedstrange – pre-order here
See the band at Shacklewell Arms, Dalston (September 23) and Number90 in Hackney Wick, (September 24, with Three Quarter Skies, and 25)