A Place To Bury Strangers announce new album, Synthesizer with a vinyl variant to create your own instrument

Synthesizer is the title of the album, but it is also a physical entity, a synth made specifically for A Place to Bury Strangers’ seventh album. The band have never been one to do things by halves, and they once again demonstrate that with vinyl version of the album's packaging, which is made up of a circuit board that fans can use to build the instrument.

“It’s pretty messed up, chaotic,” says frontman Oliver Ackermann, “But it feels really human.” 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. Synthesizer is a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community.

"‘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.”

The song is accompanied by a video directed by BODEGA’s Ben Hozie and filmed by Joe Wakeman, and frames the band next to and within distorted images on TVs to “achieve a certain style of cine-cubism where the band members can be seen from multiple angles at once in the same frame.” “This sense of dissociative texture is exactly what A Place to Bury Strangers music feels like to me,” Hozie says, “I was trying to create a visual accompaniment to the disorienting buzzy speed of the band's grooves and bliss of their distorted overtones.”

Later this month, A Place To Bury Strangers will take their celebrated live show back on the road for a world tour. The dates will see the band cross the US, Europe, Canada, and the UK, playing alongside the likes of YHWH Nailgun, Stella Rose, The Black Angels, Martin Rev, The Black Lips, Shabazz Palaces. and more. The band will also take part in a London live residency across three dates during in their UK dates, including Sonic Cathedral's 20th anniversary, and shows in association with Loud & Quiet and Fuzz Club.

Tracklist:

1. Disgust
2. Don't Be Sorry
3. Fear Of Transformation
4. Join The Crowd
5. Bad Idea
6. You Got Me
7. It's Too Much
8. Plastic Future
9. Have You Ever Been In Love
10. Comfort Never Comes