Synthesizer is the title of A Place to Bury Strangers' seventh album. It is also a physical entity, a synthesizer made specifically for A Place to Bury Strangers’ seventh album. A synthesizer that you too, can own (in part), if you buy the record on vinyl. “It’s pretty messed up, chaotic,” says frontman Oliver Ackermann, “But it feels really human.” In an era of making music where so little is DIY and so much is left up to AI, to never setting foot in a practice room or a home studio, making something that feels deliberately chaotic, messy, and human, is entirely the point. Synthesizer is a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community.
The writing sessions for Synthesizer started in 2022 in the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of See Through You. A Place to Bury Strangers re-formed with a new lineup, Ackermann still at the helm, now featuring friends John and Sandra Fedowitz. This new iteration of the band was inspiring for Ackermann, “It felt like a fresh new thing,” he says, “I wanted to write songs everyone was excited about playing.” Indeed, the sense of connectivity is everywhere on the record. Synthesizer very much feels like a record of reinvention, of taking a carefully honed aesthetic and sound and cracking it wide open, gutting it, reimagining it. And of course, to ever so slightly reinvent one’s sound, one must also build a new instrument, thus again the synth in question. The resulting record is one that is romantic, colorful, loud as hell.
In practice, Synthesizer is a study on walls of noise and sound. It explores what it means to twist and bend gear to its limits, to search for what Ackermann jokingly and also not jokingly calls the “most epic sound journey.” Take “Fear of Transformation,” as one such offering, a snarling gothic techno punk track that feels like getting body slammed by a wave out at sea. Here, the synthesizer has an almost alien effect. It is sweaty and strident. Ackermann views the song as a conversation with the devil, to break out whatever cage of fear that you’re inhabiting and do something kind of artfully evil. Elsewhere, like on “Have You Ever Been in Love,” the vibe is hypnotic, easy to get swept away. The song was written by everyone in the band, born out of its tribal drum beat, its open spaces. It was written quickly, “In a moment, in an afternoon,” Ackermann says, “Maybe even in an hour.” It felt exciting to write, exciting to make. And it is beautiful to listen to, the spotlight on Sandra’s beautiful vocals. It is unsteady like new love is unsteady. Scary like taking a chance on someone is scary.
Synthesizer, which is out October 4 via Ackermann’s Dedstrange label, is one of A Place to Bury Strangers’ most live sounding records to date. This is a band that is meant to be witnessed in a live setting, where the songs take on a new energy in the presence of a crowd. “Disgust,” the record’s lead single, captures that live essence perfectly. The song is all open strings, so that way Ackermann can perform it with his fist raised in the air, so he can play it live with one hand. It’s a tongue-in-cheek move, almost as tongue-in-cheek as the decision to start the song with a high-pitched battle cry from the guitars, which Ackermann jokes is to “turn people off from listening to the record.” That playful approach to making music and intentionality around live performance makes sense in the historical context of the band. Ackermann founded the storied DIY space (and now effects pedal factory) Death By Audio. DBA, as a venue, had a collaborative, creative spirit of chaos and collectivity. That essence appears all over the band’s work. “We’re artists,” Ackermann says, “Going to shows and bringing that imperfect and beautiful DIY ethos is important.” Imperfect and beautiful — that’s a good way to sum up Synthesizer. It is a raw collection of songs, wild and loud and fucked up just like the instrument itself.