WYRD_SIGNAL

In the first of what we're intending to be a series of conversations around the theme, Lucy joins Jonathan Kennedy (@getradified) to discuss the onging events taking place in Gaza and the Western media's role in facilitating Israel's onging war on the Palestinian people. WYRD_SIGNAL is still on hiatus but we've opted to use this channel while we figure out our long term plans with this project.

In the latest in our ongoing interview series, Sean talks with horror writer and literal ex-High Priest of Set Don Webb about weird America, the Left Hand Path, and eyebrows.

Sean and Lucy join up with Bobsy (of Diane and DEEP STATUS fame) get to grips with an entity that has loomed large over the history of the 20th century and the history of WYRD_SIGNAL since its inception - the archangel of high strangeness: Mothman!

Sean and Lucy team up with video essayist, musician, author and actress May Leitz to discuss internet horror, mediated reality and the hybrid geography of late capitalism in Jane Schoenbrun's 2021 film We're All Going to the World's Fair

Sean is joined by none other than M. John Harrison to discuss science fiction and the limits of genre, failures of personal identity, landscape weirdness, and an untranslatable word in Portuguese. Author photograph by Hugo Glendinning (cropped and grayscaled by Lucy to fit design conventions)

Lucy and Sean take a detour from their focus on film to explore what "fucked America vibes" mean to them in musical terms through an intensely personal road trip across the post-punk/prog rock/groove metal and 90s alt. landscape

Sean and Lucy join up with Bobsy (of Diane and DEEP STATUS fame) get to grips with an entity that has loomed large over the history of the 20th century and the history of WYRD_SIGNAL since its inception - the archangel of high strangeness: Mothman! Subscribe to our Patreon to hear the full two hour episode at patreon.com/wyrdsignalpod

Sean is joined by the legendary Lee Edelman to discuss the history and (no) future of queer theory, with a brief bypass through Coronation Street

Lucy and Sean go down the rabbit hole of American Paranoia, talking conspiracy cinema of the 1970s, therapy cults, the post-60s malaise, the deep state and the confusing unreality of the American Century in Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

In our first Patreon exclusive episode of WYRD_SIGNAL, Sean and Lucy team up with video essayist, musician, author and actress May Leitz to discuss internet horror, mediated reality and the hybrid geography of late capitalism in Jane Schoenbrun's 2021 film We're All Going to the World's Fair Access to Patreon-exclusive episodes is $2 a month over at https://www.patreon.com/wyrdsignalpod star of the film in focus: We're All Going to the World's Fair (Schoenbrun, 2021). In it we discuss our responses to the film, go into some deep background lore around the production and explore the themes of

Lucy and Sean kick off "Fucked Americana Season" with a double bill exploring postmodernism, mediated reality and the horrors of the early and extremely contemporary internet with The Last Broadcast and Dashcam

WE ARE BACK! Completing the unplanned 'Japan Trifecta' Lucy and Sean discuss queerness, body horror and the savage, posthuman future of 1989 in Shinya Tsukamoto's legendary TETSUO: The Iron Man

In an informal supplement to our episode on Pulse Lucy and Sean discuss urban legends, ghosts and the disputed existence of J-horror as a cohesive genre or movement, and along the way do a mini-analysis of Takashi Shimizu's Marebito/稀人 (2004)

Lucy and Sean return to the dank, haunted universe of fin de siècle internet culture at the height of Japan's lost decade, encountering ghosts physical, metaphorical and digital in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's rhizomatic masterpiece PULSE/回路

Lucy and Sean get it together to belatedly wrap up WYRD_SIGNAL S3 before the dark winter of 2020 sets in by going through their recommendations for obscure, under-recognised or undeservedly maligned horror movies! Films listed: Nadja (1994) Baskin (2015) Organ (1996) A Dark Song (2016) Toad Road (2013) The Borderlands (2013)/Grave Encounters (2011) Tesis (1996) The Wailing (2016) The Legend of Hell House (1973) The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

Lucy interviews director, composer and writer Graham Reznick about his work from his debut with 2008's I Can See You to his 2018 series Deadwax, as well as his collaborations with Ti West and the intersections of music and film in horror of the last decade. Deadwax (2018) is available via Shudder at https://www.shudder.com/series/watch/deadwax/f0d3c8a35de5ca85?season=1 His recent music can also be found at https://grahamreznick.bandcamp.com/ - Robophasia and his work on PIECES Vol. 3 with Deadly Avenger for Burning Witches Records is available here: https://burningwitchesrecords.bandcamp.com/

Lucy and Sean are joined by video essayist, composer and fellow horror nerd May Leitz (@NyxFears)to explore all that is shocking, painful and unwholesome in the world of extreme cinema from the surrealist eye-gouging of Luis Buñuel to the edgelord antics of the directors of the New French Extremity as they discuss Pascal Laugier's deeply upsetting masterpiece: Martyrs

Sean and Lucy team up once again with Max Feldman to explore Sadeian liberty, the principles of Enlightenment, the history of madness, Artaud's theatre of cruelty and the still ongoing the repercussions of the French Revolution in Peter Brooke's 1967 adaptation of Peter Weiss's play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

Sean and Lucy - totally twisted on frustrated wanderlust - sojourn into the sultry, introxicating climate of the Italian Peninsula to discuss Lucino Visconti's adaptation of Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice - exploring the twin impulses of the Freidrich Nietzsche's Apolline and the Dionysiac, the history and theory of queerness in 19th and early 20th century Europe, Freud's essay on Narcissim and the Lovecraftian turn in Mann's modernism.

Lucy and Sean get up to speed on latest developments in the wider WYRD_SIGNAL artistic and political sphere, discussing the recent passing of Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, Richard Stanley's The Color out of Space and Robert Egger's The Lighthouse [Artwork: The Hypnotist, Sascha Schneider (the 19th Century painter and scluptor whose name Lucy couldn't find during the podcast)]

Lucy and Sean return - spectre-like - to discuss the core WYRD_SIGNAL tenets of Hauntology, occult technology, fringe religious ideas and weird psychology in the ontological uncertainty of Reagan's America as they tackle everyone's favourite contentious rite-of-passage teen film: Donnie Darko

Sean and Lucy are joined by journalist Max [von] Feldman for the pre-hiatus/end of season wrap party in which we participate in the dissection of Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce and the career and mind of the author of its source material: Colin Wilson

Lucy and Sean are joined by Matt Colquhoun (@xenogothic) to discuss cannibalism, art, queerness and the mythological and psychosexual dimensions of serial killing through the lens of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Series! [Apologies in advance - there are some instances of interference on the recording caused by having left the microphone next to a billowing curtain]

Lucy is joined by researcher Joe Ondrak to discuss the ontologically ambiguous history of the online fiction genre of the Creepypasta, exploring its status as literature, its various critical aspects and its uncertain future in a post-web 2.0 universe.

Lucy and Sean take take a deep dive into the queer themes present in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, exploring ideas of weirdness, degeneration, erotofascism, Freudian Narcissism and the world of Oscar Wilde and the decadents.

Lucy and Sean are joined by friend and fellow scholar of the weird, Richard Havell (@FolkParanoia) to discuss recent happenings in the world of science fiction, fantasy and the hotly anticipated adaptations of Dune and Michael Moorock's History of the Runestaff, as well as the works and legacy of Gene Wolfe (May 7, 1931 – April 14, 2019)

Lucy and Sean make their first excursion outside of the Anglophone sphere* to explore the world of malevolent ghosts, cruel theatrics, hyperrealistic violence and the spectres of nuclear conflagration in Nobuhiko Obayashi's psychedelic fantasy horror film House/ハウス(1977) *Nosferatu doesn't count because it didn't have sound

Sean chats with YouTuber Cuck Philosophy about Mark Fisher, Joy Division and the politics of pessimism and depression.

[Episode available only to our INDIGO tier Patreon subscribers] Sean and Lucy discuss nuclear eschatology in the Age of Sin, the speculative prehistory of 17th Century UFO culture, and the peregrinations of the prophet Daniel in this first, proper inaugural Encrypted Transmission of WYRD_SIGNAL

Lucy joins the director Gabriel Gettman to discuss performance theory, Jungian psychology, Lovecraftian cosmology in contemporary horror and the uncanny realms of postmodern goblin cinema. More information on his debut short, Caecilia (2017) is available here: http://www.caeciliafilm.com/ http://www.gabrielgettman.com/

Kicking off another visionary director's non-sequential trilogy, Lucy and Sean are joined by writer and journalist Philippa Snow to plunge into the strange liminal territory of sociological metamorphoses, crime, deserts, uncomfortable parties and pornography as they discuss David Lynch's 1997 film: Lost Highway

Dispatch from the Screaming Edge of Now - Sean and Lucy explore the newly born yet fast becoming mythos of MOMO the Facebook hoax come queer icon and her predecessors in the hypersitional world of internet cryptids. [UPDATE: WYRD_SIGNAL is now on PATREON! Find out more about how to support the show at https://www.patreon.com/wyrdsignalpod]

Sean and Lucy team up with their erstwhile pal and collaborator Chris Richford to talk about cosmic horror, Hellenic philosophy, biology, computers and the death of masculinity in John Carpenter's gut-twisting masterpiece The Thing!

In this episode Lucy and Sean pay tribute to two key figures in the world of WYRD_SIGNAL: David Bowie and Nicholas Roeg, exploring the intersections of Cold War capitalism, space travel, gnosticism, time travel and the creative potential of cocaine and mirrors in the 1977 science fiction classic The Man who Fell to Earth

Sean and Lucy join Producer, DJ and Instrument Designer Lia Mice to talk about music and the techno-physicological implications of time travel. Lia's new album The Sampler as Time Machine can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/album/5xxpAR2NmcRYj19XWrVe6v Information on Lia's work is also available via her website: https://www.liamice.com/

Sean interviews philosopher David Roden about post-human futures, speculative realism and the limits of knowledge.

Lucy and Sean recall a grim Halloween night in the early 90s and discuss the hypersititonal phenomenon come collective national trauma that was BBC's 1992 'drama': Ghostwatch.

Lucy speaks with filmmaker, communist and soda enthusiast Jonathan Kennedy (@getradified) about his recent films, haunted media, surrealism, 80s skater films and the state of the weird in modern cinema. Jonathan's work can be found at https://vimeo.com/getradified

Sean and Lucy team up with Elizabeth Sandifer to discuss the state and trajectory of modern cyberpunk in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) and Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014).

Lucy and Sean trace the dark, mysterious and often bizarre currents underpinning one of the most radical periods in art history: the Weimar Republic, and the first truly great works of experimental horror cinema which arose from it, as they discuss F.W. Murnau's landmark vampire film: Nosferatu.

Sean and Lucy venture venture back to rural England of the early 1970s, drawing on the origins of folk horror from William Blake to Charles Manson to discuss Piers Haggard's brooding classic: The Blood on Satan's Claw (US title: Satan's Skin). Outro music by Belbury Poly: The Scarlet Ceremony, from The Owl's Map, Ghost Box 2006: https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/the-owls-map-0/

Lucy and Sean take a disquieting peregrination through the dark tunnels and back streets of New York to explore the urban wyrdness, conspiracy lore, psychedelic warfare and the cultural mindset of post-Vietnam America in Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Lucy and Sean explore a vision of an uncomfortably near future as they explore cyberpunk, robo-ethics, artificial intelligence, ambient post-modern media violence, and currents of radical Gnostic thought in Richard Stanley's Hardware (1990). References, materials and side notes are available through our Hardware megathread over on our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/wyrdsignalpod/status/994193233570861056

Sean and Lucy journey into the woods of Maryland and into the strange new world of the post-historical century to investigate the history and cultural resonances of 1999's The Blair Witch Project. References, materials and side notes are available through our Blair Witch Project megathread over on our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/wyrdsignalpod/status/986227286914584576

In this week's episode Sean and Lucy take an unpleasant trip to Montreal to encounter the weird in its most grotesque manifestation in Cronenberg's biomorphic nightmare vision: Shivers!

Sean and Lucy discuss Nicholas Roeg's psycho-supernatural horror film 'Don't Look Now', starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, based on a story by Daphne du Maurier.

Sean and Lucy discuss the landmark sci-fi/horror teleplay: Nigel Kneale's 'The Stone Tape' talking about Derrida, Marx, H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, ancient aliens and occult media, in this inaugural transmission of WYRD_SIGNAL. References, materials and side notes are available through our Stone Tape megathread over on our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/wyrdsignalpod/status/990254127316983808