Fans all over the globe know: Oliver Ackermann always brings surprises. The singer and guitarist of New York City’s A Place To Bury Strangers has been delighting and astonishing his audience for close to two decades, combining post-punk, noise-rock, shoegaze, psychedelia, and avant-garde music in startling and unexpected ways. As the founder of Death By Audio, creator of signal-scrambling stomp boxes and visionary instrument effects, he’s exported that excitement and invention to other artists who plug into his gear and blow minds. In concert, A Place To Bury Strangers is nothing short of astounding — a shamanistic experience that bathes listeners in glorious sound, crazed left turns, transcendent vibrations, real-time experiments, brilliant breakthroughs.

And just as many of his peers in the New York City underground seem to be slowing down and settling in, Ackermann’s creativity is accelerating. He’s launched a label of his own: Dedstrange, dedicated to advancing the work of sonic renegades worldwide. He’s also refreshed the group’s lineup, adding bassist John Fedowitz and drummer Sandra Fedowitz, and the band has never sounded more current, or more courageous, or more accessibly melodic.

A Place To bury Strangers released their highly anticipated sixth album See Through You February 4, 2022 on their label Dedstrange to critical acclaim:

FLOOD album review – https://floodmagazine.com/98622/a-place-to-bury-strangers-see-through-you/ “The addition of new elements and perfection of familiar qualities make See Through You a special album from A Place to Bury Strangers. Even as its attributes rewrite and reject sonic ideas from previous releases from the band, each song on this album sounds quite different from the next. A Place to Bury Strangers went out of their way to make this record an eclectic and diverse range of sounds within a specific style, leaving room for innovation and rewarding unpredictability.”

All Music album review (4.5/5) – https://www.allmusic.com/album/see-through-you-mw0003626128 “Continuing the early 2020s hot streak they kicked off with the Hologram EP, A Place to Bury Strangers deliver one of their most interesting and intentional albums in See Through You… That they can create a career peak like See Through You two decades after forming makes them all the more inspiring.”

Brooklyn Vegan “Indie Basement” album review –

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/album-reviews-cate-le-bon-jazz-butcher-a-place-to-bury-strangers-los-bitchos-love-b urns-the-reds-pinks-and-purples/

“Twenty years into the band, Ackermann is still finding new sonic and melodic avenues for A Place to Bury Strangers, and new ways to make their instruments sound totally insane.”

Listenable and insane. That’s the sound Dawn of Midi spent years shaping, culminating in their most mesmerizing work yet: Dysnomia.
 
In many ways, it’s the first record that truly reflects the trio’s critically acclaimed live show, a test of endurance and trust that involves bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and percussionist Qasim Naqvi performing their compositions note-for-note without ever appearing the least bit predictable. If anything, Dawn of Midi’s sets are as red-blooded and rhythmic as a seamlessly mixed DJ set, casting spells on crowds in the same way the group’s favorite experimental and electronic acts have for decades.
 
Which explains why The New Yorker‘s music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, wrote “an hour flew by in what seems like minutes” after witnessing their high-wire act last year, and Radiolab host Jad Abumrad added “[I’ve] seriously never seen anything like these guys.”
 
Belyamani is quick to say that Dawn of Midi have followed their own internal logic since day one, largely thanks to the fact that they were friends first—playing late-night tennis matches in dimly lit parking lots well before they stepped into a studio or rehearsal space. As such, Belyamani admits its taken quite some time to shift from early improv sessions to the well-oiled machine that makes Dysnomia both a dizzying dance record and a deeply immersive living room listen.
 
“Playing a locked groove like we do on this record involves a lot of discipline and hard work,” he explains. “You don’t start out that way unless you’re a group of folk musicians from the same village.”
 
Forget being from the same village; Dawn of Midi’s respective families aren’t even from the same country. Belyamani was born in Morocco, where he “grew up in a culture where people do polyrhythms in their sleep.” A stateside move didn’t happen until he turned 18 and decided to study abroad at CalArts. Meanwhile, Israni relocated from India to Southern California when he was just four months old, and Naqvi’s parents left Pakistan before he was born in Connecticut.
 
“Both my parents are major music fans,” says Naqvi. “They love old Hindi songs from the black and white film era, and different kinds of traditional music from the South Asian subcontinent. So that stuff has definitely filtered through me somehow, but scales and rhythms from that part of the world are not something that are central to my musical thinking. At least not yet.”
 
That’s the thing about Dawn of Midi now that they’re based in Brooklyn and touring open-minded markets worldwide: As carefully cultivated as their aesthetic is, it’s also been known to incorporate, willfully and otherwise, such wildly divergent influences and interests as Aphex Twin, the Police, Can and Ms. Pac-Man. And when they really fall for a record—like they did with Dr. K. Gyasi after hearing his highlife hooks in Berlin—it quickly raises the bar of what they want from their own music.
 
Hence how Dysnomia ended up being recorded, mixed and mastered in its entirety twice. As Israni explains, “Late one night, I realized the record we had just made wasn’t the quantum leap we needed, so we started over. Then it was another year and a half of rehearsing and composing before we could go in the studio again.”
 
It shows. While the original version was semi-improvised like the trio’s critically acclaimed debut (2010′s First), the final 46-minute cut is a brooding balancing act between a fascination with structure and a desire to create their own definition of dance music. Set aside an hour to experience the multi-movement title track in full and you’ll hear what we mean, as a language only Dawn of Midi truly understands locks into one long, seemingly endless groove and mixer Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Owen Pallett, DJ Rashad) makes sure every last high-wire hook hits you square in the chest, even the quiet parts.
 
“It’s interesting with this piece,” says Naqvi. “There’s actual music in the silences. You could almost take the negative space and make something completely different with it.”
 
“The spaces between the dialogues of the notes are filled in by the body of the listener,” adds Israni, “and they complete the circuit, leaving one option—to dance.”
 
Dysnomia is out August 6th, 2013 on Thirsty Ear Recordings.

 
http://www.dawnofmidi.com

Pontiak is three brothers that grew up and live on farms in Virginia. Their lifelong closeness yields uncommon musical understanding, creative collaboration and personal camaraderie. Their singular combination of impressive work ethic and boundless creativity pays off on their new album INNOCENCE. From the explosive title track to the mellow groove of “Wildfires,” these 11 songs are some of the most absorbing and melodic material the band has produced, without ever losing their signature heft. It was recorded in the band’s Studio A in Virginia without the aid of computers.
 
When the band began to compose the songs that became INNOCENCE, instead of employing their well-worn method of carving out melodic passages from the squall of feedback and fuzz, the Carney brothers’ songs frequently began the process with a trio of vocals, often eschewing instruments altogether as they wrote. Nowhere is this more apparent than the melancholic ballads of “Wildfires” and “Darkness is coming”. On high energy, hook laden tracks such as “Lack Lustre Rush,” “Surrounded by Diamonds,” and “Ghosts,” the distortion and the searing yet elegant guitar lines hang on the brothers vocal melodies.
 
In addition to designing their own album artwork, the band films, edits, and directs all their music videos, including the 18-minute short film entitled Heat Leisure,which the band released in 2013. The film juxtaposed the staid, oft silent beauty of historic Virginia farms, many of which were the location of civil war battles, with the live bombastic beauty of a rock show. The performance featured two new songs made in collaboration with several guest musicians, including labelmate Greg Fox of Guardian Alien. The film premiered as an official selection at the Chicago International Music and Movies Festival. In addition to East Coast dates with Guardian Alien in December of 2013, the band will be touring the US and Europe following the album’s release. (via Thrill Jockey)

Over the past couple years Woodsman has been on a vision quest of sorts. Relentlessly touring and honing a sound born in basements and warehouses sprouting from amps and speakers like lichens on the forest floor. Grounded in experimentation and inspired by the films of Stan Brakhage Woodsman create visceral tunes born from their environment. When you’re living in a city under mountains you can feel that rhythm seeping in. Satisfaction is never guaranteed only suggested and with six releases to date Woodsman leaves it up to you.

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