An Interview with Dave Chisholm and Charlene Elsby, IGORRR and Werewolves
Two Interview Articles, An Editorial and a News Article enter the bar - what did the News Article say to the Editorial?
Welcome back to the My Kind Of Weird Newsletter. In this edition, we give you an excerpt from each of our favourite articles over the last fortnight.
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An Interview with Dave Chisholm: “Music is Weird, right?”
My Kind Of Weird: You’ve brought your flair for music back into the world of comics. Would you care to give my readers your elevator pitch for the Spectrum series?
Dave Chisholm: Spectrum is about an cosmic, eternal war happening in the realm of music and sound, told from the point of view of two ground-level women, each embarking on a search for family.
My Kind Of Weird: Let’s address the elephant in the room. I’m assuming Spectrum was a working title which speaks to neuro diversity as well as the diversity is music - in how each person responds to it? Or am I miles off?
Dave Chisholm: Ah, I don't want to speak for Rick. If readers make that connection, then great--there is a neurological angle that shows up more overtly later on but I doubt it's anything readers would be able to predict.
My Kind Of Weird: After reading the first two issues I would say that Spectrum presents the world of music much like an artistic canvas. With sights, colours, movements and tragedies that can be found wherever you look so Id like to get your take on this, how do you overcome the challenge of translating an audible medium into a visual worlds?
Dave Chisholm: This challenge is a real obsession of mine--how to do this in specific ways, not just general VIBES, but how to really take tangible elements of a piece of music and reflect them on the page. To me, it's just a hop and a skip over from the challenge of depicting movement on a comic page-movement in a static, still medium - and there are a bunch of tried-and-true techniques for that.
So, by this point, with something like 1000 pages (is that accurate?!? haha) of published music-related comics under my belt, I have developed a number of techniques for this challenge. I teach a college class about this topic here in Rochester at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology).
It's called COMICS & MUSIC!
An Interview with Charlene Elsby: “By the Choices we Make, We Become what we are!”
My Kind Of Weird: Hey Charlene, you’ve recently had one of your books, The Organization Is Here to Support You, published by Weirdpunk Books. It’s bold and dystopian yet minimalist and terrifying. I feel like it may have been partly inspired by your work at a university where you mentioned being let go on a recent episode of the Death Sentence podcast. Can you give my readers an insight into the inspiration behind it?
Charlene Elsby: Hi Anthony! I'm so glad Weirdpunk agreed to publish this. For me, it's a pretty normal book, but like, trying to figure out where it fits in the landscape wasn't easy. We didn't know how it would land or who was going to read it, but we agreed that as weird punks, that was fine and fuck it.
As for inspiration, I'd say it was more when I left academia and started working 9-5. It reminded me of when I taught Sartre, how somewhere in Being and Nothingness he's talking about adopting an alternate consciousness for the sake of a role, and even feeling the emotions that go along with it, and I felt that. When I taught that book, the example I gave was about when I used to work at a restaurant, and the other waitress would always put the straws in the recycling bin with the soda cans, and how mad I used to get about that--cares I wouldn't have if I didn't work there.
At my 9-5, I could feel myself losing my soul, adopting others' priorities as if they're my own, talking in the jargon, getting actually invested in things that, were it not for the fact that I have to sell my labour to subsist, I wouldn't give a fuck about. I think it happens everywhere when we have to adopt the values of a corporation and be human on our own time.
My Kind Of Weird: As I read The Organization Is Here to Support You, your protagonist seems to be caught in a never-ending web of policy and process. In a way, she’s forever stuck in this sterile corporate environment. I’d be interested to hear your take on if you think the more technologically advanced we are the more disconnected from reality we can become?
Charlene Elsby: That seems right. Coincidentally, I was reading an article this morning that correlated high social media use with delusional disorders. Intuitively, I think we recognize that our views are shaped by the people with whom we choose to associate. I'll do it myself when I want to hear some specific affirmation, so I'll go talk to the person who I know will say what I want to hear. I like feeling good! And social media gives me so many tools where I can amplify that.
At the same time, you have to wonder why with all that power, social media still makes us feel like shit. Maybe there's some grander concept of human existence that extends beyond the momentary pleasure of affirmation? Some deep connection that's necessary to fulfillment that's impossible to establish in the digital muck?
My Kind Of Weird: The use of sex in your book is exploitative but used in a way which feels like your protagonist is doing whatever she can to maintain whatever little control she has over her life. Do you feel like this is the catalyst for her eventual downward spiral?
Charlene Elsby: The sex is there because people have sex; there's a point somewhere in there about how digital fucking counts, that this was her problem with Maurice. The catalyst for her spiral isn't sex. Still, it's one of the ways she finds to sometimes think about something outside the organization, and that's some sort of freedom. It might seem like Clarissa has lost control over her life, but she knows that every day she makes the choice to show up to work, move the mouse, perform the tasks.
That's one of the worst things about living in that sort of environment--that she isn't being forced. If there were only some more immediate motivation for her to continue making the same soul-killing choices day after day, perhaps that would excuse them. But it's a choice--a restricted choice, with only bad options, but a choice nonetheless.
Brace Yourself: IGORRR’s Amen Arrives September 19, 'ADHD' Single Out Now
For two relentless decades, French sonic anarchist Gautier Serre — better known as IGORRR — has been bending genres like spoons at a psychic fair. And just when you think you’ve figured out his formula, he tears up the blueprint. His fifth studio beast, Amen, is set to detonate on September 19th via Metal Blade Records, and it’s anything but a safe play. Packed with left-hooks of sound that’ll rattle even the most battle-hardened audiophile, this record keeps IGORRR’s freak-flag flying high, hurling curveballs that hit like sonic molotovs. Expect to be surprised. Expect to be unnerved. Mostly, expect the unexpected.
Since hitching his sonic circus to the Metal Blade wagon back in 2017, IGORRR has morphed from a one-man mind warp into a full-blown collective of chaos. But make no mistake — Gautier Serre is still the mad scientist behind the mayhem, the puppet master pulling every glorious, unpredictable string. If anyone can attempt to explain this beautiful monstrosity, it’s the man who dreamt it into existence in the first place.
"This album is definitely darker than its predecessors; it has such a very weighty and solemn vibe that has never been reached before in IGORRR," explains Gautier. "The fact that I recorded a real choir in a church helped this a lot, but above all there has been very long and meticulous work on the sound and the choice of instruments, and deep experimental research to create a unique sound design. Of course, because it’s an IGORRR album, there are some more colorful tracks, like ‘Blastbeat Falafel,’ ‘ADHD’ etc… They contrast very much with the ambient heaviness. I need tracks like these on an album, it helps to really get through it fully focused, like a shot of limoncello before the next meal."
Curse of the Werewolf: Rules and Lore of Lycanthropy
When did the Rules of the Werewolf start?
Once a month, when the moon is full, the beast will hunt...
The Werewolf has been a part of popular consciousness for hundreds of years, appearing in ancient Greek mythology, Nordic folklore, literature and later in film, television and even song (Edgar White’s Werewolves of London). A less desirable and romanticized creature than the vampire, the werewolf is pure animalistic instinct with a tragic bent - the person inflicted with the curse of lycanthropy is not usually in control of their actions when in wolf form.
But like the vampire and other monsters that have been around for an age, there are rules that characterise the werewolf, and there are also variations on these rules throughout popular culture. The commonly accepted werewolf lore has evolved through storytelling, often in films like The Wolfman (1941).
The Curse of the Werewolf
The most common cause of lycanthropy is to be bitten by another werewolf. If one survives, they will get a lot hairier (and hungrier) come the next full moon. In Dungeons and Dragons this is called the ‘Curse of Transference.’ In The Wolfman, Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) is bitten by a wolf while getting his fortune told in a Romani campsite.
The next day his wounds have healed and he becomes the titular Wolfman. In the 2010 remake, Lawrence finds out his father is the werewolf who made him and they brawl in wolf form at the climax of the film.