ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ INTERVIEW

with DJ Sorrow ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ALTERNATIVE PRESS

✮ You're blurring lines between genres, what inspired your sound and aesthetic?

I just kinda grew up around rap and dance music. I didn't grow up around a lot of metal, but this guy at school kept putting me on to stuff. I liked the simple, droning, heavy guitar parts the most. Anything too flashy or "virtuoso" bounced right off me. Some of what you hear is me, some of it is samples. And I just wanted like... the best of all possible worlds. I kept making little mashups on my laptop, and thinking "i wish this was a real song. this goes hard."

✮ Have you had to deal with people judging you in your personal life for the music you make?

Not really. I don't have a lot of people in my life. The people that stuck around... They can trust that I'm trying to be funny or weird here. I can really get down and hit it off with people, any mention of substances is true to life. But nobody's scared that I'm a real threat here.

✮ What inspired the title. Hauntsing.

I was in the group-chat with my friends. I was trying to type haunting, but I was typing too fast. They all copy-pasted "hauntsing" at me, and changed the name of the chat to hauntsing. They were kicking my ass in there *laughs*. They do that with all my typos. "Skellington" is another big one.

✮ This is your first album that you didn't release by yourself. What inspired you to sign to TERAVOLT?

I'm pretty content to cook by myself. Y'know. My mind to the world, with no prism to filter it through. But I sent a DM to Callan Young . Nothing too scandalous. In fact, I was a little rude to him, but he heard me out, and we talked it out. We were at a bar discussing terms. A little throwaway message spun out of control fast, but that's life for you. Some of the best things that happen just kinda fall into your lap.

✮ What was your conversation with Callan like?

He said he listened to everything. I pulled some of my material from streaming sites, but he already had a complete picture of me. I try to go hard on weird sounds and aesthetics to "filter" people out, but he said he loved it, and offered me a deal. Again, it felt like something I did spun out of control.

✮ You said you pulled some of your songs down? What happened there?

A lot of what I took down was collaborations with people I'm not talking to anymore. I nuked my page, man. You can throw it back up on yours if you want to. I don’t care. Hauntsing is a collage of what I wanted to keep from my past. I have my eye on something new.

✮ You decided to keep your cover of Goodbye Horses. What part of that song spoke to you?

I can get a little morbid, but it's a counterpoint to all that. It's about leaving pessimism behind. It's about your mind and your senses expanding past the material world, and a new sense of perspective.

✮ What helps you escape your pessimism and think bigger?

When I go on a long enough hike by myself, I can just feel it. The wind is singing a note I can barely hear. The trees have been there before I was born, and they're gonna outlive me. Mount Pyre in particular is a burial ground, but I see an eternal life in there too. And maybe that "expanding past the material world" is what Coil is about too. That's the "sublime", isn't it? A feeling so strong that it elevates your soul to the highest level. In this case it's about a love and a yearning so strong that I don't care if it's the thing that kills me.

✮ Love doesn't come up often in your work. Have you found anyone here who made you feel that way, who maybe inspired Coil?

Wouldn't you like to know. *laughs*

✮ Now that we're on songs, there's a lot of mysticism. Sometimes you even compare yourself to a monster. Where does that come from? I'm thinking of Deer God.

There's a lot outside of the material world. A lot of things we have no control over. Beautiful, haunting things. I talked about that earlier, when I said the wind could "sing" a note I could barely hear. That's me grasping at something. That's me wanting to be bigger than our senses. When I'm just a pair of eyes and a mane of hair in the corner of your eye, on the trail, that's as close as I get.

✮ There’s a lot of references to films too. Do you have any favorites?

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hereditary, and Beetlejuice are my top three, but I’ll watch anything.

✮ That's great. I gotta wrap this up. Are you planning on touring, or working with anyone else in the TERAVOLT camp?

I wanna play bigger and bigger venues. But as for working... I just got here. I have no clue what's next. But putting one of those pop girls with a boy who looks like he'd chase her around the playground with a Spinarak on his hand sounds like fun. All I can say is stay tuned. ✮