Listen To The Scrussian's Album 'Them Whomst Guillotines Is Made Fer'

Wellington-based artist Jackie ‘Boy’ Mells has been making music under the pseudonym The Scrussian since the release of his 2015 collection Glasses Jacket Shirt Man. He's since shared six further releases under that name and two more as Raiden Freeman. Each album is impressively individual and wildly different to the last. In turns harsh, abrasive and strangely beautiful, The Scrussian's music is an unrelenting aural onslaught that takes no god-damned prisoners.

Each track from The Scrussian's latest record Them Whomst Guillotines Is Made Fer is a cascading experiment in sound; guitars wail in chiptoned voices, drums riff like saxophones and nothing is what it seems. Iron Maiden-esque triple-harmony solos are seen in the same tracks as Zach Hill / Brian Chippendale unhinged primal drum beats. And it all works together, because every sound you hear on the record was thought up and then recorded by the same freak.

The man himself is as wily and hard to get a grip on as his music. To try and clarify things Daniel Smith asked him a few questions, listen to Them Whomst Guillotines Is Made Fer and read The Scrussian's words below...

Who are themst guillotines made fer?

Bosses, landlords, small business owners, cops, anyone with a million or more dollars, anyone who uses the website Reddit.

These songs are messed up – how do you begin creating them?

I can’t remember how I made a single one of these. Like any set of songs, they’re all pieces of crystallised labour, and musical labour is some of the most boring that there is, so for my own sake none of that has stuck in my memory. Usually the germinal idea of a song begins because I get annoyed at something someone else has done and feel the need to rebuke them. This is not, however, indicative of the final product because I would say every one of these is an aborted failure insofar as making a compelling counterargument to the inciting agita, nor do I remember what the inciting agita(s) must have been. That’s probably why they’re so “messed up,” along with all the botched attempts to play the parts that I left in instead of fixing them.

What was the idea behind your album cover?

I think everything you need to answer that is on the cover.

What has been influencing you in this act of creation?

Haunted malls, Das Kapital, object-oriented ontology, Bertha Antoinette Mason, the shadow of the waxwing slain, Lil Uzi Vert