ShockHound

Interview by Kory Grow

Playing dark, cryptic music to match their dark, cryptic name, Brooklyn-based shoegazers A Place To Bury Strangers conjure up a world of ferocious Sturm und Drang. The self-described "Loudest Band In New York" packed their self-titled 2007 debut with songs like "To Fix the Gash in Your Head," "The Falling Sun" and "She Dies," each whirring with vocalist/guitarist Oliver Ackermann's noisy, feedback-laden riffs and whispered-to-muttered lyrics. Written and recorded between 2003 and 2007, the album's material, with the exception of the song "Breathe", was previously released on two EPs; it reveals a band in transition, readying a harsh pounce with its next release.
    At this point, though, they don't know when that will come. Having recently turned down a deal with Highwheel Records, the group (which also features drummer JSpace and bassist Jono MOFO) has been writing songs for their next album, which Ackermann promises will trounce the material on APTBS's current record, whenever they finally see the light of day. In the meantime, Ackermann pays the bills by manufacturing and selling his own Death By Audio line of boutique guitar effects pedals, which boast such appropriately onomatopoetic names as "Supersonic Fuzz Gun," "Fuzz War" and "Total Sonic Annihilation."

SHOCKHOUND: Do you wear earplugs when you play?

OLIVER ACKERMANN: No. But we usually keep our sets down to about 30 minutes or something, so I've heard that maybe that doesn't damage your ears so badly. But when we're playing, I'm usually not even paying attention. I'm usually watching a TV in the backroom or something else. I'm not even listening to the show. Just joking, but that sounds good. [Laughs] When I'll see other bands, a lot of times I'll wear earplugs. I think we kind of play so loud so that we're feeling what we're doing at that time. And you get to directly hear the frequencies, and I think that's really important for the performance. It's loud just because we're cranking a lot of effects and making the signal extremely hot going through.

SHOCKHOUND: Why do you build your own effects?

ACKERMANN: A lot of effects companies will build things where it limits the volume of the frequencies to keep things within a very musical range. We usually don't really worry about that too much. Things kind of go out of control [with our effects]. We end up breaking a lot of amplifiers and stuff.

SHOCKHOUND: How often do all these electronics make everything go haywire?

ACKERMANN: All the time. [Laughs] We just played last night and we blew the power to half the stage, and kind of had to get some extension cords real quick while the guitars were feeding back, to run the power and continue on the show. And then there's sometimes, like, crazy feedback and stuff. We leave some of it up to improvisation, so you can let something go crazy and use that to your advantage, or build upon that and hear the beauty in things that are sort of fucked up.

SHOCKHOUND: How do people react when things go wrong?

ACKERMANN: I think they're screaming or something, but I can't really hear them. [Laughs] I think it's a good reaction.

SHOCKHOUND: How do you go about building your effects?

ACKERMANN: I'm always buying interesting chips that you can get that do interesting things, like things from discontinued toys. I've got this pedal called "The Robot," which uses these chips that they use for those voice-transformer things to make you sound sort of like an alien. And that does some amazing things; with the guitar it does these arpeggiations and pitch shifting. Also, [I like] this filter that we've used where it uses a chip that was found in medical equipment; it does a really precise calculation of a frequency so you can tune in, and it has this really huge fat sound, sort of like a low synthesizer. It's all about working with those accidents, sometimes it's good to capitalize on that unwanted noise, and use that as an unpredictable variable in your sound. It kind of keeps it where you don't necessarily know exactly the sounds that are gonna be coming out. You're just trying to play with that bit of chaos.



SHOCKHOUND: Are there any effects you've built that you haven't used?

ACKERMANN: Sure. There are some effects that are just too crazy, like "Total Sonic Annihilation," one of the first pedals that I ever came out with. I don't really use that live. It's almost too unpredictable. If you're sitting down twiddling knobs at that moment, you could have more control over it but it's kind of tough in that live situation when we're playing guitar. Having to sing and play guitar is really tricky as well. There's so many different things that you're doing at the same time. I don't even know how I'm doing half of the things. It's like juggling or something.

SHOCKHOUND: Since you've been a live band for so long, what do you make of the general positive reactions you've gotten for your current release?

ACKERMANN: I'm definitely surprised. I've just had other people convince me that things had to be really slick and recorded some certain way. I've been doing this sort of D.I.Y. recording for a really long time with my past band, Skywave, and it just never seemed to really get too much attention. So I always just kind of felt like maybe we were taking the wrong approach on things to get people to notice this kind of music. People would notice the live show, this is back in the late '90s, before these recordings. But it's really great that people are into this recording style, so I think we're going to continue.

SHOCKHOUND: What are your plans for recording in the future?

ACKERMANN: We have tons of songs. We even saved a bunch of songs that we didn't want to put on that last album because we wanted to do it right. We're still gonna record it ourselves, and I just feel like some of the songs were better than what was on that last record.

SHOCKHOUND: What happened with Highwheel? Rumor had it that you were going to do your next record with them.

ACKERMANN: They're a really cool label, and the guy who runs Highwheel and owns it offered us a really good deal, and then he sent us a contract that wasn't so good. They were just pushing us in directions that we weren't willing to jump on, so we just decided to decline. We just sort of mutually got out of the contract. I didn't want anyone owning our master tapes, so we didn't go with it.

SHOCKHOUND: Since you do labor over writing songs, are you concerned with people not hearing what you're doing as musicians live because it's too loud?

ACKERMANN: No, that's okay. You kind of have to take some risks. I think experimenting and pushing those boundaries can be kind of interesting. We're definitely playing with dynamics, so there are times when things aren't that distorted and then there's times when they are, and I think that contrast can be really beautiful

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