Published on June 29th, 2012 | by greg
0Questions and Answers with A Place To Bury Strangers
Ventvox recently had the opportunity to interview lead singer and guitarist Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers. A Place To Bury Strangers has their third album Worship out now and it’s a great listen for fans of chaotic noise laden rock and roll.
How are you and how have things been going?
Hey thanks for asking, I am doing good just working on a lot of projects since I’m back in Brooklyn, building some effects, cleaning out my house and rebuilding a lot of it.
After recently seeing A Place To Bury Strangers in Cincinnati, I noticed that my ears wouldn’t stop ringing. Is that a bad thing? Should I have brought earplugs?
Perhaps. I think that is supposed to be a sign that you are losing those frequencies in your hearing but I never find that to be the case. I think my hearing is good and I have been doing this for a really long time. But you have to pick your times you want to listen to everything and the times you don’t. Or maybe listening to something that gets really loud isn’t that important for you. That is your call but our music is intended to be listened to without earplugs and that is why I don’t wear them. I wouldn’t want to force someone to have to endure something that I wasn’t going to myself.
How did the rest of your tour go with The Joy Formidable?
Great, those guys were really great to see all those days on that tour.
What’s the story behind Worship? Is Worship a breakup album?
Worship is an album about our lives up until this point. Just what we think about. There are break ups, reflection of bad times, regret, hopes and dreams and really just everything we have been involved in recently.
Worship is a dense album, how did you get such a full sound?
We built a lot of the stuff we used to record the record and really pushed what could be done for cd’s mp3s and all of that. We weren’t concerned with rules of how to record but just what sounded bad ass. And since it was us behind the controls we were really in tune with what was going on.
I’m glad to hear that you have not compromised your sound on Worship. Have there been any changes in music that you would like to incorporate in future A Place To Bury Strangers releases?
We are constantly excited by new things going on around us and that does reflect in the music we make so we can;t help but have things change over time. It is a really exciting time for music right now and we are embracing technology and the eclectic scene of music as much as we possibly can.
Is “Dissolved” the most melancholy track that A Place To Bury Strangers has ever recorded? BTW, I dig the reverb effect during the bridge. It has this Cure feel to it.
He he, I’m not sure perhaps it is. We have recorded a lot of melodic stuff which doesn’t really ever make it on to records. I guess it always feels like people need a good dose of fucked up rock and roll so that is what we focus on.
Do you play all Death By Audio effects pedals on Worship? Hopefully that’s not a stupid question but I was wondering if used any classic pedals on your recordings.
No we don’t, we use a lot of things. Basically anything we can. I used to collect effect pedals before I got way in to building them so there are a lot of other things floating around old and new. But we do use mostly Death By Audio effect pedals.
Do you experiment with Pro-Tools in the recording studio? Or are the tracks on Worship unmodified?
Most of the tracks recorded for Worship were unmodified but there were a lot heavily modified as well. We really just use whatever works for what each particular song needs. It is important to me to record with the sounds that you want so you can play with the effect while you are playing but sometimes this doesn’t work out so there aren’t really any rules except no keyboards.
How do you get your ideas for your pedals, is it through experimentation or does each pedal start out as a thought out process?
There really is no way in particular this is done. Sometimes it is from reading documents about new technology, sometimes I want a particular sound in the studio, or sometimes it comes from an idea about circuits and sometimes just from pure experimentation. Usually from a few of these combined.
Will Death By Audio be expanding its retailers in the future?
I think we probably will. More and more people are going crazy over the pedals so we keep making more and more of them.
When can fans expect A Place To Bury Strangers to tour again?
Always next week. We don’t stop.
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