If you think the new A Place to Bury Strangers record has a basic or obvious name, you may be missing the point. The name is the instructions. Synthesizer (out now via Dedstrange), IS actually a synthesizer.
“People have been building synthesizers as small as a business card—at least a card that contains the circuits and connections you can use to build it into an effects pedal,” vocalist Oliver Ackerman explains when I ask, as a non-technical type, how the hell a record layout design can literally be a synthesizer. “It just dawned on us that we should make one of these circuit boards into an album cover, and we did that, so anyone can turn it into a synthesizer, but you do have to know how to do it; you need to do some soldiering and actually know how to make it. But with some expertise and the right tools, you can actually build it.”
So why literally build a machine and music production tool? “We wanted to create something messy, organic, and human to combat all the AI in music, to contrast with all that, and because we wanted some fun, hands-on tool for folks to experiment with. You can take months or years to build it; you can never build it; you can build it right away and do some cool stuff with it. It’s totally up to everyone how to interact with it.”
In addition to that theme showing up with the visual design, it comes through in the songs too. Ackerman says the songs, both lyrically and musically, are about, “Man versus the machine. We can’t compete with technology, and we can’t escape social media or even AI, but we can find comfort in human interaction, in making something messy, and in the energy that comes from playing music, live shows, and creating.
“Like, I’ll never be that great of a guitarist, of a singer or anything; I’m not perfect,” he adds. “But that’s not a bad thing; it’s that human, magical element and that excitement. It’s about those times when you do make a mistake, or you do something crazy that wasn’t supposed to happen, but then it’s cool. So a lot of the themes are fear of transformation, of me being an old fogey afraid of change and being trapped in an Instagram world.” (laughs)
Of course, as exciting as this record is for fans, everyone knows the real excitement of A Place To Bury Strangers is in their live shows.
“I’m always thinking of new things for both live shows and the record, different random, possible avenues and things like that,” says Ackerman. “I know with everyone around me, that drives them a little bit crazy because I’m always planning a few things at once. I’ll do things like write the setlist right before we go on, and everyone is like, ‘What are we going to play? What are we going to do? ‘I’m like, we’ll figure it out. I like to live in a weird, frantic, nervous buzz bubble or something I guess, but it means no two live shows will ever be the same. Any chance you get to see us live, we’re going to be bringing all sorts of insanity to all of the shows that we have coming up. If you want to see some people who have spent their life working on the craziest live show you’ve ever seen, come on out and see A Place to Bury Strangers.”
Synthesizer is out tomorrow, and you can preorder it here. Follow A Place to Bury Strangers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and TikTok for future updates.
Photo courtesy of J. Donovan Malley
