Have Your Ears Shattered by Notoriously Noisy Shoegaze Stars, A Place to Bury Strangers, Dec 14

A Place To Bury Strangers (APTBS) is the kind of band that pummels you with its noisy, intense, intricate playing. Just ask The Washington Post, whose music critic described the Brooklyn band as “the most ear-shatteringly loud shoegaze band you’ll ever hear.” Below, vocalist and guitarist Oliver Ackermann tells us more about earning that notoriously noisy reputation, his DIY forays running both a performance space, and a boutique guitar effects-pedal manufacturer, and more. Catch the band play at Yugong Yishan on Dec 14.   

I've read that: "In 2006, APTBS gained acclaim following their Webster Hall performance with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The band returned to Webster Hall in 2007 to play with one of their major influences, the Jesus and Mary Chain." So what was it like to perform with your heroes?
Playing with Jonestown was really cool because they were peers of ours and artists we really admired. But playing the Jesus and Mary Chain was completely overwhelming. I loved them when I was in high school, and we used to drive around and listen to them all the time. It seemed like I had entered into a fantasy world. It was something that I never thought would happen. For me, they were the top. I had spent many a night listening to my scratched old copy of Psychocandy, until I drifted off into that world of noise and leather boots.

Your shows were notoriously chaotic in those early days, leading many reviewers to call you New York City's "loudest band." What sparked and fueled the chaotic nature of these gigs?
I had always just loved shows that were really extreme, and I started getting into more and more extreme versions of this. There has always been a changing but specific style of our music. But the aggression builds as you continually get dissatisfied with your surroundings, as you become more aware of current events, and as you have injustices happen to you and the ones you love.

I also feel like music is about intense feeling and passion. That is what drives someone to dance, or gives them motivation to drive super fast, to ride your bike, or paint, and so on. That goes hand in hand with the most intense personal emotions: hate, love, jealousy, anger.

How did it feel to gain the reputation of NYC's loudest band?
I don't really care one way or another. The volume we play at is a necessity for what we are doing to maintain extreme dynamics, and to create the sounds of speakers exploding, ears bleeding, glass breaking, total destruction.

Aside from rupturing all those eardrums, you’ve also gained a strong reputation as a DIY musician, running the Death by Audio (DBA) performance space and music studio. Unfortunately, though, the space had to be shut down. How did you cope?
The performance space was founded and run by friends that I lived with and artists in New York at the time. I used to go all the time and it was really a huge bummer when it closed. But at that time, so many people came together and had a huge celebration of art and music for a solid month of some of the best times of my entire life. It was always a constant inspiration and incredible time. That kind of loss is always sad, but it was so great to even have been a part of it. I am lucky.

Most of your last album, 2015’s Transfixiation, was recorded at DBA. Tell me about how that space was an asset on that album, and how it feels to write and record music in a new space since DBA closed.
For Transfixiation, we were trying to capture what the band sounded like live, which is always impossible. There is so much feeling and power put into a live performance, something else has to be captured. I rebuilt our studio to be able to record as many tracks as possible. That was my big idea that I got from recording some tracks on our last record, where we would put 20 or so mics on one guitar amp and get a larger than life sound.

We learned something even way more important while writing the songs for that record, though. We recorded its closing track, “I Will Die,” right as we were writing it, even though one of the mics was on the floor and another was pointed away from the band. But it had captured the most amazing sound, despite all that. It turned out it wasn't the sound quality at all that mattered, but the emotion and feeling of the moment. Then I learned that that was the most important thing, and at that point we switched gears and just tried to gear ourselves up when recording, and just capture the moments when we were most excited, pained, or whatever was needed for each individual track.

What’s next for APTBS?
Well, we have a new space now, and we built it out, although we aren't throwing shows at the moment, and we have our recording studio up and running and the pedal-building space. I've been designing like crazy, a lot of really super insane effects, and we'll all just have to wait and see what comes! We might even have a very special pedal on sale in China when we come.

A Place to Bury Strangers will perform at Yugong Yishan on Dec 14 at 9pm. Tickers are RMB 120. For more information, click here.

Photos: londontheinside.com, heretoday.dk, deadoceans