When we last interviewed the “loudest band in Brooklyn” in late 2007, A Place to Bury Strangers were just starting to feel the taste of an immense new buzz surrounding their self-titled release and their accompanying live show. A year and a half later, they’ve signed to Mute Records, finished recording album #2, and gained quite a following of people who like both hazy reverb-laden shoegaze and louder, heavier fare. They have only a smattering of tour dates, but one of them is tonight at the Rock & Roll Hotel. They’ll be sharing the stage with one of the loudest bands in DC, Caverns (***) (celebrating a music video release) and True Womanhood (***) (who told us back in January that they’d be recording up with the people at Death By Audio, the effects pedal company run by A Place To Bury Strangers frontman, Oliver Ackermann). We asked Ackermann a few questions about the new album, how he deals (or doesn’t deal) with the residual effects of noisemaking and how it felt for the Fredericksburg native to play the 9:30 Club back in October.
Are you guys doing a lot of tour dates right now or are you just coming down?
We’re not at this very moment, we just finished our record. And then we’re sort of taking it slightly easy this summer. We’re not playing a lot of tour dates. That’s just too crazy.
What are your feelings about the new record. How did recording go?
It went really cool. We took the time and kinda did it ourselves and really got a lot of sounds and everything that we were trying to go for.
What do you think you were going for that sounds different from your self-titled release?
It was for the self-titled release more sort of recorded demo songs and just getting ideas for the rest of the band to fill out the songs more, pieces of work as a whole so that the songs fit together and have more of a continual idea. I think it really captures what we’re like live where everyone’s playing most of the instruments and it’s all got some of that energy that wasn’t in the songs that were just recorded by me, I think.
Can we expect to hear any of those new tracks tonight?
I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll bet there’s probably some things that we’ll play.
How much time do you allocate to running Death By Audio and how much time with the band. And how much of that overlaps?
It overlaps all day. It’s kind of the life that I live which keeps things exciting to be constantly thinking about everything and to be going back and forth between working on songs or building effects pedals or coming up with ideas for effects. Sometimes when you’re doing one of the two you come up with an idea for the other. It’s good to have it all in the same spot.
We’d previously interviewed True Womanhood, one of your openers and they talked about potentially recording at Death By Audio. Has it expanded to include recording as well as effects pedals?
We’ve always been recording bands a little bit. It’s just a lot of friends and whatnot but we definitely have some studio spaces that we’ve built that we use to record all the time. That’s where we’ve all recorded with A Place to Bury Strangers and a bunch of the other bands that live here all kind of record here and do everything as well.
Was it True Womanhood or Caverns that contacted you about joining in on the show?
I think it was Caverns. I think somehow we got True Womanhood to get on the bill. But those guys, one of my housemates has been working on their recording and they’re an awesome band. I’m psyched.
Something that I’ve noticed that you and Caverns have in common is the sheer decibel level of your work and someone even gave you the title of “The loudest band in Brooklyn.” Do you guys where earplugs on stage?
No, we don’t. That’s so we can hear all that’s going on at the moment. You want to be able to hear what you’re playing, so that involves no earplugs.
That makes sense. Do you guys fear any ear damage?
I don’t think so. Maybe we do a little bit. I have been playing loud music for a very long time so I imagine I must have some form of continuous ear damage but nothing that I really notice.
Last time you came through here, you played at the 9:30 Club. Having grown up in Fredericksburg, how was the experience for you of getting to play there?
That was insane, really. That was nuts. I couldn’t really believe it. It’s like, the 9:30 Club seemed almost bigger than any venue I’d played which is actually bigger in other New York or California or something but it always had that sort of myth or legend. It was really nuts to get that opportunity to play there.
A Place to Bury Strangers will be playing at the Rock and Roll Hotel tonight with Caverns and True Womanhood. The show starts at 9:30pm. Tickets are $12.
