Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers have managed to refine sonic punishment to an art form. As they’ve carved their way through both post-punk and noise rock circles, the group has earned the title of “the loudest band in New York” – and for good reason. Their energetic live shows are deafening to the point they leave attendees physically stunned.
This year’s Australian tour sees A Place To Bury Strangers playing only three shows along the east coast, whereas their last visit consisted of eight shows across the land. The Canberra stop on that tour witnessed a turnout that could be counted on two hands, and although other acts would call that enough of a reason not to return to the capital, guitarist Oliver Ackermann explains that isn’t why the tour is so short this time.
“It had really nothing to do with any of that,” he says. “The last tour we did, the promoter did a rinky-dink line of shows. This tour, it was more just a matter of time. We have a whole other tour that starts up in the US right after this – and Europe – but we’re going to Asia right before this trip. We would have loved to go across Australia but it’s not possible. There’s only so much time that we can play everywhere – we’d love to and I’m sure we’ll be back again.
The band has performed more than 150 shows this year already, and given we’re only just past halfway through 2015, that’s no small feat.
“Sometimes it gets pretty crazy, you’re so tired you can’t even bear to go on,” Ackermann says. “Other times you’re so excited to be in these places. It sort of goes up and down. As you would imagine, it’s very physically demanding to be doing this stuff, and as you get older you start asking, ‘Fuck, I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to do this,’ but you’re gonna keep on trying. When the show starts, you feel like you could break a pick on the world. So as long as we keep playing shows, we’ll be alright!”
Ackermann takes a hands-on approach to the band’s special effects, which constitute a large part of A Place To Bury Strangers’ identity. As the founder of the small Brooklyn-based effects wing of Death By Audio, Ackermann has been responsible for making sound effects for bands such as Lightning Bolt, Wilco, Nine Inch Nails and U2 – along with A Place To Bury Strangers themselves.
“We make tonnes of stuff, and it totally makes all this [band success] possible,” he says. “Stuff like building drum effects, the lights, making videos, all sorts of stuff – as much as we possibly can. It’s fun to do all of this stuff, so why not? Then you can really be in control of what you want to do. It makes you think of other ideas for songs and for a really interactive show. It’s the way that the world should work – if you can bring something cool and interesting to share for other people to see, I think that’s an awesome thing. I want to see someone’s artwork that’s impressive and kind of cool and I want to make those things happen.”
Initially, there was more than one pathway that drove Ackermann towards experimenting with noise.
“There were just a lot of factors, sort of a building thing that sculpted my life into what it was. I saw tonnes of crazy shows when I was younger, growing up out at Providence, Rhode Island back around the time when Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Forcefield were around and playing, saw bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. – even just getting a guitar and an amplifier, hearing how awesome it sounded to turn it up and hear these great noises you can make. All of these things influenced you to keep those feelings alive.
“As time goes onwards with drugs and experiences and all sorts of stuff, your memories get hazy. You’re going on with what you remember of these ultimate shows and ultimate experiences you experienced, and build on those ideas. You bring upon a dream world on other people. It’s hard to even tell if it translates. I can’t go to one of our shows. You just do what you can to make a crazy experience that moves you, I suppose. You’re just … challenging yourself to do things you think warp space and time.”
Prior to his involvement in A Place To Bury Strangers, Ackermann played bass in post-punk act Skywave, a band cut from similar cloth. The formation of each group was very different, and the location had everything to do with it.
“Being in Skywave, I was in a band with my closest friends from Virginia,” he says. “We grew up discovering music together – we were on exactly the same page when we were writing. So when you come to New York, it’s a whole different thing. Everyone comes from so many different places that you get this patchwork quilt of people coming together. It’s learning, growing – it creates things differently, for better or for worse. There’s nothing else I could imagine now, though.”
[A Place To Bury Strangers photo by Dusdin Condren]
Transfixiation by A Place To Bury Strangers is out now through Dead Oceans. They play Manning Bar on Saturday September 5, with Flyying Colours, and Narrow Lands.
