A Place To Bury Strangers
Words: Aubrey Bramble

I had the opportunity to snag an interview with New York City's A Place To Bury Strangers literally moments before they exploded onto the terrestrial indie rock scene. The band, often hailed as "the loudest band in New York," delivers crunchy, distorted noise compliments of lead vocalist and guitarist Oliver Ackermann's custom effects pedals, which he has parlayed into a successful side business, Death By Audio.

Ackermann, along with Jono Mofo on bass and Jay Space on drums, is relieved to be getting some attention after over ten years of pushing the DIY music wagon up a very steep hill. Having played to almost exclusively Manhattan audiences, APTBS will be hitting the road in early 2008 and rupturing impressionable eardrums everywhere. Be sure to drop in and check them out when they come to Florida. Bring earplugs.

REAX:  What differences exist between your live sound and your recorded music, with your heavy reliance on effects pedals?
Oliver Ackermann: I strongly feel that playing music in a live setting is very different than playing music for a recording. It's like a whole different ball game. You need to make things sound a certain way when it's being recorded which is totally different from the opportunities you have when you're doing a live show.

REAX:  Oliver, please talk about Death By Audio and how you came to be involved in the production of custom effects pedals.
OA:  I started the company because I really wanted to go to Europe for a month. It was a month away from my departure date and it was going to be about 3,000 because I would be gone for a month. I'd been working with a bunch of different effects - stuff that I'd made - for a while and I'd just come up with this effect that no one had made before. So I thought it would be a good idea to release that pedal to the public. So I sent out a few emails and it just kind of snowballed into making about 3,500 in one month.

REAX:  You guys have recently exploded onto the Internet scene, specifically in the blogs and webzines. How has that been for you?
OA:  It's been really cool because for so many years, starting around 1994, I've been kind of doing this whole DIY band sort of thing and trying hard to like send out demos and set up shows. Even at ridiculous places like peoples' pizza parlors. It can just be so hard to coordinate all these things that it's just so amazing and exciting to have people who are even contacting us. It makes the whole process easier; it's kind of like a dream come true.

REAX:  I know that Pitchfork gave your album and 8.4 out of 10...
Jono Mofo: That's what kicked it all off. We went from getting 200 plays a day on MySpace to getting around 5,000.

REAX:  What's next for APTBS?
JM:  Basically we're just going to concentrate on what we have right now and try and get it out to as many people as we can, and then see where it goes from there.
O: We're definitely also planning towards writing this next record, and I feel like it's going to be a stronger record because we're trying to write it as a record. It's just been pushed back so I think we're going to have a little more time to work everything out and get it to sound exactly the way we want.

www.myspace.com.aplacetoburystrangers
www.deathbyaudio.net.