For over twenty years, noise-rock and experimental project A Place to Bury Strangers have been pushing boundaries and challenging listeners with their avant-garde approach to electronic music. Lead member, Oliver Ackermann not only creates music for A Place to Bury Strangers, Ackermann is also the founder of Brooklyn-based effects pedal company, Death By Audio, known for their cutting-edge and abrasive effects. Finding a way to overlap both worlds, Ackermann created an actual working synthesizer built in to the vinyl release of their latest album, Synthesizer. 

Synthesizer is dark and ominous with its pulsating electronic elements and crunchy guitars. And allowing fans the opportunity to build their own synthesizer with the physical album is a means of breaking down barriers and connecting with people through music. This idea of connection via art is prominent throughout our conversation with Oliver Ackermann as he shares the process of building the physical Synthesizer record, his thoughts about AI music, artists that he’s been inspired by lately, and much more.

mxdwn: First off, how are you, and where are you currently in the world?

Oliver: I’m doing great. I’m in Miami at the moment, in Florida. Just over here hanging out. Where are you at? 

mxdwn: I’m in California. SoCal. Yeah. It’s a little gloomy right now, but it’s nice.

Oliver: Can’t be good weather everywhere.

mxdwn: Well, I want to talk about the new record Synthesizer. It’s abrasive, very cutting-edge, forward-thinking, it transcends multiple genres. What kind of production techniques or music theory did you incorporate into this new album that you haven’t done before? 

Oliver: We did a lot of different things. For one, the big thing on the record was that we built a custom circuit board which is the actual cover of the record. And while we were designing that circuit board, once we had that completed, we used that synthesizer that’s the album cover on all the tracks on the record. So that was a way to force an instrument into the mix because it made sense with what we were doing. 

So once you set a rule that you’re gonna use some specific piece of gear on every single song on the record, it opens up different ideas and different things that you’re playing with. I think that was a good thing to force ourselves to do. A lot of that stuff is recorded in our studio in Queens which is also connected to the Death By Audio pedal space. And there we have tons of outboard gear and all sorts of stuff. 

There were songs where there’s a microphone recorded pointed at a pot or a pan or something, or a bunch of microphones on one source. Sort of experimenting with some different things that we’ve done in the past. There was a bit of manipulating equalizers and stuff. We have this Neotech couple of channel strips, and we were changing the EQs as we were recording or some other stuff like that. 

mxdwn: That’s cool. It sounds like a lot of very technical, like if you know, you know, kind of things.

Oliver: Yeah, but also just using the stuff that we had and was available to us. Me, I’m in a unique position because I build electronics and effects and stuff. So there was lots of stuff that we’re always working on that excites me at these times and then I get into. There’s also lots of, “We need a DI, but we don’t have anymore. So grab a Sansamp or use some other piece. Run it through this amplifier that could have XLR out,” or something.

And you just use what stuff you have around, and I think that’s been something that I’ve always remembered when recording that you kinda go to and you can find out interesting things experimenting with what you do have. 

mxdwn: That’s cool. So it sounds like even in the beginning when you were first starting, you’re doing it very DIY. And it sounds like you’re doing that even today. 

Oliver: Yeah, the first A Place to Bury Strangers record, I had bought this computer interface. It was like the first big computer interface that I bought. It was, I don’t remember, the Steinberg, something or whatever, but it never worked. And I was going back and forth with the company trying to get it to work, and it never worked. 

We wanted to record demos and stuff. So all I could afford was this $89 mixer at Guitar Center, like an Alesis mixer which had USB out. We used that to record the whole first album. It could only be stereo input, so all the drums had to be just two mics or everything multi-tracked with that. It’s more about what you wanna do with your music. You know? You can always, if you’re crafty, figure out a way.

mxdwn: One thing I’m interested in is as technology in relation to music production becomes more advanced, what makes analog synthesizers so irreplaceable to the point where you named the album after the instrument?

Oliver: I think that there’s something that’s captured when things are actually happening physically. There’s a lot of people that are making all these plugins that sound great and all this stuff. I can’t tell whether the analog stuff still can’t be replicated and it just sounds better naturally. Or maybe it’s something else like there’s something about the human interaction with these things. Physically running your sound through a distressor even does something to you mentally where you’re kind of excited because you’re having to actually put this through this thing. And then there’s this, I don’t know, something else that happens.

But right now, the analog distressor sounds way better than the digital replication. And I often do these things where I’m trying to program these drum machines or these synthesizers on the computer, and you’re just scrolling through these presets and all these different things and constantly searching for the right sound. I think it’s even more about having the sound while you’re recording these things that help you feed off of what this is. And that actually playing this physical sound makes things a lot more exciting and makes them make sense to the sound that you’re creating. As much as it seems so easy and great to go from these digital things, nothing sounds better than taking even some digital synthesizer and playing it physically and running it into your computer.

mxdwn: It sounds like there’s a very human element when you’re playing with these actual synthesizers. 

Oliver: I think so. I think that that’s kind of where we’re probably at with music in a lot of ways and what is kinda fun. It’s what’s fun about some of these pop artists like Charli XCX or something like that. Her sassy, sort of DIY, sort of fucked up attitude which is so cool rather than something that’s precisely done. I don’t know, I find that stuff at least more interesting than… I mean, I like old, crazy messed up live recordings from the 60s and 70s, 80s and stuff too. But something about that it’s like you almost get transported to a time, and you can hear the crowd and everything that’s going on. I think it’s especially with the AI music moving on, it’s gonna be all we really have.

mxdwn: Yeah, for sure with AI music it’s such a daunting thing. But is there any way you can see in the future artists use that to their advantage in a way?

Oliver: I’m sure there’s people already doing this out there now. For one thing, it would probably help you do things that are not fun to do. Maybe automatically do whatever you need it to do. Categorize your songs or label your tracks, or whatever it is to make your flow of work easier. 

But I think you could see it really well in the analog, in the AI video world. You’d see these people do these really psychedelic mixing of these scary and nightmares and super weird, surreal things that you would have never really seen before. And I think that that’s kind of interesting and where potentially I’m sure there’s some of this stuff in the music world. I think it exposes how easy it is to AI generate some precise dance music or something like that to where they’re creating these things. And maybe that’s easier for most people. Not everybody’s way into music or all of these kinds of things and just like to listen to it as a soundtrack to their life. That’s cool too. 

I feel like certain bands are really great at being, like you’re out at a bar and there’s a band playing in the background. And there’s something about that that’s really cool. Or at a restaurant and it’s entertainment or something. You’re just there and you kinda wanna dance, but you also wanna talk with your friends and stuff. There’s different ways that all of this stuff makes sense.

Maybe that’s a fine thing to sort of get rid of some of those jobs. It’s sad and messed up and terrible, and I love creating music so much. So it really sucks to think that other people won’t get to go down that journey of exploring these kinds of things and figure out the science of sound and how it’s important, how these things go together. Where you can just click a button on a computer and it just automatically does a bunch of stuff. I think you’ll definitely lose something but whatever.

mxdwn: I feel like it’s hard to feel optimistic. But there’s still artists out there who are really channeling forward and really pushing boundaries even with all this technology.

Oliver: Totally, for sure. I think it’s even becoming a different sort of thing, which is interesting. It’s more about the story of the person, the story of what’s going on. You hear these people, and it even gives a voice to a lot of this. Then there’s a lot of cool artists who have lived these really interesting and crazy, fucked up lives in a lot of ways. And then they have an outlet. And because of the Internet, anyone can get on Instagram and start a page that you gravitate towards these people because their actual lives are really interesting or really bizarre, or something strange. Then it makes these things have a point. 

I remember being in art school, and they were saying it’s about when creating a piece of art or whatever: what’s the point? So that’s a good thing to ask yourself. A lot of times when creating music and stuff was, sometimes you get caught up like, “I just wanna play guitar” or something. What’s the point of this? What’s the message that you’re trying to get across? And if you’re having these people who are living these really interesting lives, that’s already baked in, in a way. They’re telling the story of their childhood which was really crazy and wild, or they’re telling you a story of what their neighborhood is like. And that’s really interesting and documenting this vibe and a moment of an actual person going through these things. That’s really cool.

mxdwn: I love that. So telling someone’s story with art in general.

Oliver: Yeah. Sometimes it would just be sounds which describe some sort of thing, but this is actually someone passing on a story. It’d be like old fireside tails or something like that.

mxdwn: I wanted to talk more about the physical vinyl of the album. Obviously it’s a circuit board. It’s kinda taking the name of the record literally. How did this concept come to be and what was the most difficult part about creating a working synthesizer with the vinyl? 

Oliver: I always had this idea because circuit boards are so beautiful. I wanted to make a circuit board be the artwork of a 7-inch or a 10-inch or a 12-inch because the physicality of it looks so cool. And then we had been building all of these different kinds of synthesizers that we bring on tour, or simple oscillators, effects, reverb, and amplifiers and stuff. We’ve been getting even more deeper and deeper into that stuff making drum synthesizers, making guitar to oscillator converters and all sorts of stuff like that. 

So it seemed like it was the right time where I could combine all of those ideas where we were building stuff. I also make all these business cards all the time. They change almost every year where you can build a guitar effects pedal on the business card. 

This just seemed like the right time. We finally had enough circuits where it can be kind of crazy and wild enough to incorporate a lot of these ideas all onto one of the things that we’re working on currently right now, Death By Audio. We thought that it was gonna be possible. 

This project was maybe about a year away at the time of its release. These design/development ideas always take a long time. I knew that we’d be able to get like one or two prototypes. Then I would be able to actually use this to record the songs on the record and just barely threading a needle that was maybe gonna possibly happen. And I thought if there was a 1% chance that this could happen, I should go for it. 

A lot of those things happened very quickly when it came to the time that you actually had the chance to do this stuff. Even the design of the record, the hands on there, I only had a couple days to come up with what was gonna be this concept. We designed all the synthesizer without really listening to it. It was designed in one of these computer programs that are used to draw circuit boards with these different elements and things that we’re working with. We put it all together, a little bit of tests, and then ordered a board to come back and build it. So that was kinda crazy. 

I thought we had like one chance to do some revisions, and we did a few revisions on this stuff; change the layout, put it all together. The boards were then all assembled into records in the Czech Republic. It was like 6,000 circuit boards that we sent there. They all weighed like three-quarters of a pound a piece. So you’re talking about a couple tons of circuit boards, coordinating all of that, and then that gets shipped to all these other distributors and places. That was kind of an insane nightmare. 

All of these things, but we’re not new to this. I’ve built many circuits. We’ve done this kind of thing with Death By Audio before where you only get a chance to do one revision or you need to hurry with something. And you design things in a way at which they’re gonna work out. It’s kind of like you cut corners and make these decisions based on the stuff which are going to work together. So that was a little bit of what it is, but in that sense too it’s like nobody’s ever put all of these kinds of crazy, sort of weird noise elements together in a thing. And for better or for worse I think it’s a really awesome explorative insane, but a very unconventional synthesizer that people get to build. 

mxdwn: Yeah, I’m really glad that you’re able to actually make this thing come to fruition because it’s such a cool idea. And the fact that fans can actually have it in their hands and kind of recreate some of the songs off the record. What kind of mentality do you have with being able to give fans the tools they need in order to create music and what does that say for the whole world of music?

Oliver: I think that’s really important. It’s kind of cool to see what are the possibilities for people. I think that’s always great to break down these barriers of that kind of stuff. It gets people more into building things themselves. There’s a lot of people who are trying to build this. We clearly said, “No beginners should attempt to build this.” So many beginners are trying to do this and that’s awesome that they’re diving in and trying to assemble this thing. We’re always there to help them out through these processes. It’s kind of a cool learning experience where maybe it’ll give you a bit of confidence to open up some of your broken gear or figure out how these things work, or understand a little bit more of the science of these things. I think that that’s important in a lot of ways. 

Being a performer or a musician, you’re gonna come into roadblocks on your journey. So it’s good to know that there’s some way to fix it and some way to make it through. I think it’s important to dive into new territory and things that you’ve never done before. Any way to kinda push people into those kinds of things is exciting. I always wanna hear new music and new kinds of ideas and people doing things out of their norm: new directions. So, if any of this could push people into that kind of stuff, then I think that’s great.

mxdwn: That’s cool. So when you’re performing these new songs, are you actually using the vinyl record? And the way that these songs were recorded first and then translated into a live setting, how was that process? Was that any different from previous records?

Oliver: It’s always different. But on this, we haven’t been using the synthesizer live on this record before. We’ve been using some of these old synthesizers that we’ve been building into boxes. But I am building the synthesizer that we’re gonna bring on the road with us. This is probably gonna happen next year where we’re gonna have the Synthesizer record that we’ll be able to play at the shows, and I’m sure we’ll be incorporating that into the performance.

But a lot of these records are almost completely recorded just by me. It always turns into the kind of thing where we’re adapting what we’re doing and you’re working with the strengths of the people that you’re working with. Then that’ll create a performance that’s better than anything else with those people. And that’s what I’ve always believed in. It’s a weird, kinda punk mentality. All of these different people that are in your band have all these different strengths, and this will bring these things together to create even better versions of these songs. Because when you’re in the moment watching some people create something that is so real and there’s a struggle that they’re trying to form this thing into this shape, it’s really awesome. 

You want the people to be excited about that happening. If people are trying to recreate exactly what is happening, then for me, that always feels like a weird, phony element to it or something. If you’re ever playing along with backing tracks or something, some people I can see could break out of this. But for me, I always start thinking about other things and then I’m not in the moment of what’s happening there. Then I’m concentrating on numbers and all sorts of stuff to sort of make this thing happen rather than be free with your instrument. Know the basis of what’s happening, know what the songs are, and then forming this in real life. 

mxdwn: Is that where the inception of these improv jam sessions at the live shows came to be?

Oliver: Yeah. Totally. I’ve been doing a little bit of this stuff anyways in some of these songs, and then it just seemed like, “Hey, what if we were to do this completely?” And we even wrote an album before that with these live jam sessions. That’s what Dion, the old bass player, and I were doing in New York because we were writing a song a day. We did that for like two months or something straight. So it was all coming out like, “Okay. We’re here together. What are we gonna write? What’s this song?” And then it would be this improvisation and turn into a song. 

That made us think we could do this out in front of people. Then you had no clue. But when you go out in front of people and you improvise and create something, it heightens the songs so much because you don’t want to write some terrible song in front of people. You’d be embarrassed. So if there’s a moment where the song turns and it’s not good or whatever, you have to embrace these kinds of things, and you have to turn whatever your mistakes into what’s the best part about this song. 

It made me open up my eyes to what Jimi Hendrix was doing. Because at some point a long time ago, like once you start to learn guitar and stuff, you’re like, “Oh, this is weird that he’s hitting all these bad notes.” But he takes that bad note and he’ll come back to it. Then he’ll keep on playing it to be like, “Nuh-uh. I didn’t make that mistake. That’s me just, freaking out, going wild.” 

That becomes one of the core moments of all of those awesome improvisations is even the mess ups and stuff. You almost have to hang on to those things and gather them and use them in a way either as a reflection. Like if everything drops out, let’s either slam back into it. Let’s bring it back up. Let’s drop out again over and over and over again, or think about what works at that moment. You’re making these decisions, and it’s based on something that’s primal. It creates something that is better than whatever you could preconceive.

mxdwn: It sounds like that’s what the definition of synthesis is. It’s creating something, blending things together that normally wouldn’t be. Like heavy guitars and electronic elements. So I feel like these jam sessions, it’s kind of what you guys are doing. 

Oliver: Right on. For sure.

mxdwn: A little bit more about the record. From a lyrical standpoint, I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that alludes to these uncomfortable human emotions like fear and disgust. I want to know how did the instrumentation help highlight some of the lyrical content of the record?

Oliver: All of those things are coming together all at the same time. So, you’ve got this feeling of where you’re disgusted in the way that people are, in the way that things are happening, and what’s happening even in your circle of people and in the world. And that’s kinda terrible. You come up with these power-drive songs which are driving along. Then you lay down these guitars that are totally disgusting and totally destroy this stuff. And that is what sort of goes hand in hand. 

As it forms up, you realize these other parts of these songs. You know, let’s drop out. Let’s stop, and then let’s come back. It kind of feels like you’re retching or whatever. And then you do that physically with your body. And it all just comes. Then as the lyrics form further, it describes what’s the whole story of the back and the forth of everything. All of those songs that get written as fast as we possibly can. If you’re writing the lyrics at the same time as writing the music, the two sort of mirror each other. And then build off of both of those things to help write and fill in the gaps of the other things. Sometimes the song takes a turn, and then that makes you want to change the lyrics. 

mxdwn: It sounds like it’s a very subconscious type of thing where you’re not necessarily thinking about it, what the feeling of the music alludes to, and you’re just kinda going with that direction.

Oliver: Yeah. I love sound so much, and I love how it’s a little bit ambiguous. All these sort of different things and twists in all these different directions that make you motivated in your day. It makes you want to do things, and makes you heartbroken. It’s the soundtrack to that and makes you feel madly in love and all of these things. So, all of that stuff ties in together and directs the songs and is like your friend that you’re writing the music with or something.

mxdwn: That’s beautiful. Obviously you’ve created all this gear with Death By Audio and giving people access to these tools. But I’m interested, are there any bands or artists that you’ve seen that used your gear that surprised you in the way that they approached it? And is there anyone that you would love to eventually collaborate with on gear?

Oliver: I think I’m always surprised when I see people who, especially that I love using the gear. This band, Snõõper who’s really sick. People send me videos of stuff like Deftones or something like that. And it’s crazy because we got to play with them years ago in Mexico City. So it was kinda wild to be like a full circle of those kinds of things happen where they’ve embraced something that I created and used it, incorporated into their sets and stuff. Lots of these kinds of bands are pretty incredible. 

All our bands that we’ve even been on tour with in these times, YHWH Nailgun was awesome on this tour. There’s all sorts of stuff where it’s insane when you hear somebody’s creating something that’s not at all what you were ever trying to do. And they’re doing their own totally different thing. That’s pretty nuts. But, yeah, I could never believe it. All the artists who’ve done this stuff really. Big artists and people who are creating things like Ty Segall and John Dwyer from the Osees. Bands that you love to go see and love all the music, and they’re using your pedals to create that stuff. It’s insane. 

mxdwn: That sounds like an irreplaceable feeling. Seeing someone use something that you created to make something even more beautiful.

Oliver: That’s really, really wild. Really insane. 

mxdwn: I know you talked about it a little bit, artists like Charli XCX who are pushing boundaries and stuff. Who are some other artists that you feel are keeping this generation of music alive and thriving?

Oliver: I think that there’s a really cool thing that’s going on with some of these different scenes  that are blooming. They’re even these scenes that were a little bit smaller and are doing really well right now. Like dark wave music and stuff. I just went to this Kontravoid, MVTANT show the other day that was really sick in New York. There’s a bunch of these bands doing cool electronic stuff. Bands like Sextile or N8NOFACE. I think that there’s lots of these kinds of different scenes. There’s cool punk scenes that are going on right now. There’s cool experimental artists who are getting more praise, or ambient artists. 

People are incorporating these different styles of music into a lot of different things. It’s kind of weird hearing bands that I grew up with and really loved, bands like My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive played in the supermarket or something. It sort of turned into this common thing. And I think a lot of people broke down a lot of barriers even with a lot of modern pop music where they use a lot of really messed up electronic elements or like the sound of what would maybe be a snare drum is the sound of some glass breaking or something that would have been only some weird industrial artists or something doing this in the past. I think that’s pretty cool and interesting.

mxdwn: As we wrap up, what are some dreams you still wish to accomplish with A Place to Bury Strangers or in your production tools? Is there a sound effect that you’ve been trying to capture for a long time that you haven’t gotten to capture yet? 

Oliver: We’re always working on different sounds and stuff. I don’t know if there’s one in particular that I would say. But I think just more ways to manipulate these things and interact with them with the human body and ways that could shift for more interesting ways. That’s sort of a lot of the stuff that we’re working on. 

For the future, just pushing the boundaries of what these shows can bring to these people and what different things that we can do and things that we can create that create even more incredible, amazing inspiring sounds. But a lot of those things have to do with how they’re created and how they’re laid out and how that contrasts with other things. And so it’s even setting up the vibes and working with spaces that you’re in and how you can harmoniously either complement or contrast those things and work that stuff in.

So just more ways to have things that manipulate all of those experiences, and create more tools for more musicians that are more universal and pushing people to the boundaries of what music can be. Those are the goals. 

mxdwn: Love that. Aside from the technology, it’s more just about creating these human experiences that really bring people together through the world of music. 

Oliver: Yeah, and inspire people. You know? I’ve had all sorts of experiences myself and have been inspired from lots of other musicians and shows and all of these things that if I can share and bring some of that human element of these things to other people and some of these other experiences through this, or inspire someone to create or do something differently, or take whatever I’ve done and gone further with it. I think that’s sort of what we can all do for humanity in a positive way.

To keep up with tour dates, new releases and more, check out A Place to Bury Strangers’ website as well as the effects pedals at Death By Audio. And make sure to listen to the new album, Synthesizer, available on all streaming platforms now.