With The Quickness #5: Illustrator & Musician Glenn "Glenno" Smith's (Mainly) Australian Rock Selections Playlist [The Witzard Interview]
"Glenn "Glenno" Smith is an art mercenary, paying the rent in Sydney with his wonderful wife Gina and the beginnings of an army of vengeful cats. He spends most of his time drawing wizards for Doom bands and spikey lettering for bands that don't care if the text is legible or not. He teaches illustration, plays in a band called CHINESE BURNS UNIT, and can be found sitting in position at his desk most hours of the day. Glenno is also making inroads into the dysfunctional world of fine art, curating, and exhibiting in a vain hope to seem legit and adult... not to mention gathering cult-sized numbers of Followers, via Instagram. Consider his refreshing Kool-Aid at #glennoart [@glennoart,]" reads the ABOUT THE ARTIST section from Bizarrism, Vol. 2: The Revised & Expanded Edition By: Chris Mikul with Illustrations By: Glenn Smith.
I believe, we first heard about Glenno Smith's artwork, via a post on Chris Shary's Instagram, but, of course, now, we can't seem to find the post in question. Regardless, Smith is an "Australian illustrator and sometime musician," according to Discogs. He's played music with CHINESE BURNS UNIT, LAWNSMELL, STITCHFACE, a reunited SPLATTERHEADS, and most recently, HELLEBORES. In addition to his own musical exploits, Glenno Smith has designed imagery—albeit, both official and unofficial—for a gaggle of artists, including Tegan & Sara, The Bronx, Hard-Ons, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lightning Bolt, Jay Reatard, Doomsday Festival, HELLEBORES, Artimus Pyle (Lynyrd Skynyrd,) Municipal Waste, Snoop Dogg, Rank Sinatra, and more. We've been emailing back-and-forth with Glenn Smith for a few months now and decided to enlist him to curate a (mainly) Australian Rock-based playlist for the latest installment of With The Quickness. Additionally, we conducted an interview with Glenno himself about all this music, artwork, and remaining creative during quarantine. Below, you'll find all of that greatness complimented by a bunch of Glenno's original artwork, plus, an additional YouTube playlist of Australian Rock "deep cuts" not included on Spotify.
Sincerely,
Matt "The Witzard" Horowitz
Australian Rock Enthusiast
I. What inspires your unique style of artwork? It seems to often blend gory Metal-tinged imagery against more cutesy, whimsical characters, which is great!
Glenn "Glenno" Smith: "Cute-ality." I like the idea of innocent things being [malevolent]. My favourite art as a kid had always been the laboured-over detailed stuff you'd see in 2,000 ad comics (Simon Bisley) ...and, then, I searched—H.R. Giger, Albrecht Durer, Dan Seagrave, Pushead, Ed Repka, and Geof Darrow—a lot of artists that participated in the Heavy Metal & Punk scenes. I'm a huge fan of [linocuts] and woodcuts and that has lead me towards beautiful/horrible Japanese stuff, like the Yōkai artists, both Manga and Ukiyo-e. I tend to draw what I'm asked to do (it's a job and a way to get by—I feel very lucky to be doing this) but when I'm left to my own devices, I try to push my next drawing to slay the last one—technique needs to improve and innovate some new way of drawing into each piece, so I can stay enthused.
II. How did your latest project, HELLEBORES, initially come together? Who's in the band and what is each members' role?
Glenno: I met my wife, Gina, at art college in the early 90's and we formed a band called LAWNSMELL. It took 20 or so years for us to get romantic, married, and in this new band... I suppose, it's an extension of the LAWNSMELL thing—it's very sentimental anyway you look at it—I play guitar and Gina sings most of the songs. We are joined by Jonny T. who is, also, in my other band, CHINESE BURNS UNIT, on bass—Jonny is a major Pop junkie, like myself. Evan completes the 4-piece—he's played in some of my favourite bands: Obat Batuk, Amateur Drunks, and recently, Boom Boom Kid.
III. What might you cited as some of your greatest sources of inspiration and influence when creating your art, music, etc.?
Glenno: I have time, space, and a burning ambition to create. It's not always been this way, but when you work from home, I can partition time into work stuff, fun stuff, and grab my guitar at will. I am always sketching riffs or ideas and get back to them, if the spark yields something worthwhile. There is nothing in particular that influences me—Gina's lyrics have meant I have a skeleton of a song to flesh out, which helps—art just happens, if you let it; time and space. It's, also, cool living in Australia. This place is sort of isolated and art isn't really something that is fostered or appreciated locally, like it is in larger populated countries with longer enlightenment histories. It gives us an edge to the art/music from here and we are left to make our own opportunities.
IV. Now that HELLEBORES' debut has been properly unleashed, what else are you currently working on or prepping for release, be it musically or artistically?
Glenno: We have four songs recorded with another seven or so to be worked up—we rarely play, so we aren't over-playing these songs before we get them recorded—this can be both good and bad, but it gets done. Over-thinking things is the death of simple stuff. We are shooting a film clip on Friday, which is something I've never really done—should be fun! We were to tour Japan with my other band, CHINESE BURNS UNIT, but, then, the plague hit. New CHINESE BURNS UNIT record is half done, as well—I really like the songs on it, so far.
V. How would you say HELLEBORES differs stylistically from your past musical projects, CHINESE BURNS UNIT, LAWNSMELL, STITCHFACE, SPLATTERHEADS, etc.?
Glenno: Firstly, SPLATTERHEADS were one of my favourite bands when I was a teenager and through luck and enthusiasm, I ended up putting out a live record for them and playing bass in a re-formed line-up—all the other bands, I've written most of the music for, so you can hear my Pop [tendency] in all that output. I have never considered myself a musician, but I am, somehow, musical and it's this style from ignorance that keeps me fascinated with song-writing. You can know too much. The best example is when people say that The Ramones wrote songs that anyone could write because of the pure simplicity and their sense of humour. They have never been bettered. No one has come close. They weren't overwhelmed by the infinite baggage of musicality that the musical Jedi seem to struggle with and end up in dead-ends and over-played, clever bullsh*t. The Ramones can only be described as The Ramones. They are an element, like gold or oxygen to me. Somedays, I get a buzz from writing a song that writes itself. It's magical that this tune, made up of all the run-of-the-mill, available chords just showed up—and even better that I've had such great friends in my bands to make these occasions available on vinyl as tunes.
VI. Who are some of your favorite bands/musicians you've been fortunate enough to design artwork for and why for each?
Glenno: I'm just going to list them—all those on this list are great friends and make great music: Hard-Ons, SPLATTERHEADS, The Meanies, Pod People, Bloodduster, The Chills, Conquest for Death, Bored! Stompin' Riff Raffs, Electric Wizard, Insect Warfare, Frenzal Rhomb, D.R.I. Acid King, Tegan & Sara, Hammerlord, Violator, Cough, Church of Misery, Cosmic Psychos, Nunchukka Superfly, Dr. Colossus, Propagandhi, Rose Tattoo, Canine, Scrotal Vice, Spermbirds, The Bronx, Clowns... the list is a lot longer, but this will give you some idea—some of these bands, I contacted after designing something, simply as a fan. That is real joy when it gets used. Most of my favourite artists, when it comes to Rock "N" Roll stuff, do the best art for the bands they love—Chris Shary is a prime example of that.
