New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — released their seventh album Synthesizer last month through Dedstrange.
While Synthesizer is the album’s title, it’s also a physical entity, a synthesizer specifically made for the album — and a synthesizer that you too, can own (in part), if you buy the record on vinyl. The album’s cover art doubles as a circuit board and functional synth for curious and enterprising fans. “It’s pretty messed up, chaotic. But it feels really human,” the band’s Oliver Ackermann says.
In an era of making music where so little is DIY and so much is left up to AI, never setting foot in a practice room or a home studio, making something that feels deliberately chaotic, messy, and human, is entirely the point. The album 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 the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of 2022’s See Through You. The new lineup which featured Ackermann and his friends John and Sandra Fedowitz was especially inspiring for Ackermann. “It felt like a fresh new thing,” he says. “I wanted to write songs everyone was excited about playing.”
The album captures the band at a place of reinvention, where they take a carefully honed sound and approach and crack it wide open to gut its then reimagine it. And of course, to ever so slightly reinvent one’s sound, one must also built a new instrument — the synthesizer at the core of the album’s overall sound.
Synthesizer is arguably one of the band’s most live-sounding albums to date, accurately capturing the rawness and explosiveness of the band in a live setting, which is a fitting for a band that is best in a live setting, where the material takes on a new energy in the presence of a crowd. “We’re artists,” Ackermann says, “Going to shows and bringing that imperfect and beautiful DIY ethos is important.”
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about three of the album’s previously released singles:
- “Disgust,” an eardrum shattering aural assault, anchored around explosive wailing feedback and distortion pedaled guitar lines paired with a relentles motorik groove featuring an arpeggiated bass line weaving in and out. But there’s subtle refinements, including some of the most rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly choruses and hooks I’ve heard from the band in some time. “‘Disgust’ is a song I wrote that was inspired by the way I used to perform ‘Got That Feeling,’ a song by my old band Skywave,” Ackermann explains. “There was a long riding open note on the bass that enabled me to play the whole part with my fist in the air. I wrote this song just on open strings so it could be played with just one hand: dumb and fun.”
- “Bad Idea,” a track anchored around a simple yet hypnotically looping drum beat and woozily oscillating feedback-driven guitar lines. John Fedowitz’s plaintive yet punchy delivery weaves in and out of the stormy and soundscape, which helps to evoke the vacillating, almost nauseating unease of self-doubt. “Bad Idea” showcases the raw creativity of the band’s bassist John Fedowitz. “He came to the studio with a simple looping drum beat, thinking he didn’t have any good ideas — thus, this song was his ‘bad idea,’” the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann says. “We each penned some lines on paper, and he sang the ones that resonated. After a few instrumental passes, the recording was complete. The result is an innovative track born from spontaneous collaboration and a touch of self-doubt, turned into something uniquely captivating.”
- “Fear Of Transformation,” a snarling and scuzzy New Wave/goth punk synth-driven ripper featuring layers of oscillating synths, a relentless motorik groove, explosive bursts of feedback paired with the band’s long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly hooks and Ackermann’s punchy delivery. Thematically, the track focuses and delves into the struggle of overcoming internal barriers. As the band’s frontman Oliver Ackermann explains, “Sometimes fear builds up and pins you in a cage. A conversation occurs in my head where I have to convince myself to just fucking do something to break out of it.” The song embodies that internal dialogue, capturing the battle between the compulsion to avoid fear and the push to confront it. And as a result, the song is a raw, uneasy and intense conversation with the devil within.
Synthesizer’s fifth single “Don’t Be Sorry,” is a brooding and tense tale of complicated and conflicted emotions, the hate, longing, heartache, betrayal and frustration that frequently comes from your nearest and dearest, and from those you’re estranged from through the use of angular and woozy surf rock guitars, bursts of abrasive synth noise paired with a chugging, motorik groove.
“This song is about how nothing in life is black and white. You sometimes feel hurt and hatred from certain people and yet somehow still miss them,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann explains. “Also, as time goes on there are always connections lost with family and friends. You really want them back in your life but can’t always make it work. Anxiety builds with regret. You continually miss chances to reach out and see them and then there just isn’t any time left.
“I feel guilt and worry, wondering what they must think; if it’s just me who feels this lost connection or if the feeling is mutual. Whatever it is, I would like for these people to know that I miss them and would greet them with open arms if it’s ever possible to reconvene.
“The ‘Synthesizer’ was used to create the abrasive crash sounds that drive home the forcefulness of the chorus ‘Return Home, Don’t Be Sorry’, contrasting with the intimate and concerned vocal delivery.
Directed by Sweden’s Johannes Nyholm, director of the modern cult horror masterpiece Koko-di Koka-da, the horror-themed video depicts a love triangle and power struggle between life, death and art, that stars the Master, the Minion and the Wife that features a fix of animation and live action, shot in a gorgeous black and white.
The remaining 2024 tour dates are below.
Tour Dates
Fr. Nov. 8 – Seattle, WA @ Freakout Festival ^
Sat. Nov. 9 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl
^ w/ The Black Angels, Martin Rev, The Black Lips & Shabazz Palaces