Name: A Place to Bury Strangers
Members: Oliver Ackermann, Sandra Fedowitz, John Fedowitz
Interviewee: Oliver Ackermann
Nationality: American
Current release: A Place to Bury Strangers's most recent release is See Through You Rerealized, a 21-track collection of remixes of songs off their 2022 album See Through You. It's out via Dedstrange and features contributions by Trentemøller, Xiu Xiu, Annie Hart, Sonic Boom, and many more. A Place to Bury Strangers are also currently on a 2023 tour through Europe. You can still catch them live here:

08 Jun - Festival Aucard De Tours - Tours, France
09 Jun - La Laiterie - Strasbourg, France
10 Jun - Reklektor - Liege, Belgium

[Read our Xiu Xiu interview]

If you enjoyed this A Place to Bury Strangers interview and would like to find out more about the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They're also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. 



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I kind of only create something out of necessity. I need to destroy something. Completely obliterate it and the only way to kindly do that and not be so selfish is to create it yourself. It is mine to break.

People can crush my wall but I could give two fucks because they didn't make it.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Nah, it can be a shoestring of shit, but if it perhaps at a moment turns into something interesting, it feels ok to share it. If it doesn’t get that spark there really isn’t much point.

There’s plenty of God honest great stuff being made and it’s tiring to have to wade through all the advertising and political bullshit.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

It’s really just whatever we dream up in the moment.

We’ve been doing this for so long, I usually just want something like I’ve never done before. What’s the next thing we could think of that’s more intense than the last. One more fix.
 
Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

No but all of those things make living nice. A book, a bath, a museum, an abandoned warehouse, some fire, some sticks, moonlight.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

You just have to do. I am the tool of a lathe cutting the groove of my experiences of life.

Live and the sounds will come.
 
When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Some lyrics are written on the spot and others are crafted over months. It just depends on the idea.

Maybe it's a song about how you are feeling right now and you are totally gutted and it just pours out. Maybe it is a song about a person you love’s life and there are a lot of different directions it goes and builds to something elaborate.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

I think if they are interesting. I also usually like timeless lyrics but those rules get broken as well.

Like if someone is singing a song about instagram I usually would be pretty turned off.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Bit by bit, sometimes over a long period of time.

But that being said some songs have been completely written, recorded and mixed in the total length of the song. So like 3 minutes.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I think the best things you can write or perform you didn’t intend to do. It’s as if they are being written by the atoms and molecules moving around you.

It is natural and that is often more incredible than what our minds can comprehend.
 
Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Often this is the real way to create, abandoning ideas for a better one, not being afraid of totally changing the original idea for something better. I feel like there is always someplace better to go.

Maybe that would get some people down, but for me that is a thrill and we are always searching.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Definitely spiritual but, as time goes on, the mystery is more and more difficult to get wrapped up in, so we have to go deeper and deeper.

To get to those places on tour, sometimes it involves us really getting ourselves into some dangerous situations, often burned, cut, bruised, and smashed. But that spiritual place is another planet where there is harmony and it is worth it if even for those very few fleeting moments.
 
Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

Only when the time limit is up. All works are potential works in process until the deliver by date. My ideas of what I love changes over time and I always want to release something that is relevant to my state. I am then more connected to it.

So when we set out to do an album it is a mad scramble to a deadline. Always bow to the deadline.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

In practice there is no method, but if I am working for someone else it is very important to give it time. Ears can be deceiving and you want to listen to music in different head-spaces to know that it can work as universally as possible.

But for my own work, it can be narrow. And focused only on the intent of the whole work and a moment.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I usually do all the mixing and mastering. I think to have a piece of work be really focused and pure, it should be put together by the people who are using music as a communication method. That is real to me.

A collaboration can be really cool but often when you think you like a record, you just like what the producer did and then find the band isn’t much of a band at all. This is usually the case with bands that play with backing tracks and it is easy to tell when there just isn’t really some sort of struggle on stage.

Me, I want to see struggle. Otherwise I can just listen to the record and close my eyes at home.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I don’t relate. I don’t look back.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

It’s all the same, I’ve just explored music more so I spend longer making an interesting piece of music.

I don’t think I’ve tasted a cup of coffee that tasted like it was worth 2 years making it. Ir maybe I have and didn’t realize what was put into it.