Thursday 13 May 2010

WITCH HOUSE

Just posted this to DrownedinSound here: http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4256639


Seems to be a good time to post this, even if I wanted to make it a bit better like. I just wanted to get there first! A couple of threads are asking for this to be the answer, so here it is in a thread of its own, and quite rightly so.
BEHOLD! Your genre for the year: WITCH HOUSE

and your bands (in alphabetical order):

///▲▲▲\\\
//TENSE//

†‡†
oOoOO
Gr†ll Gr†ll
Mater Suspiria Vision
Modern Witch
PWIN▲▲TEAKS
tearist
twYIYZoNe
WHITE RING


Ghost Drone, Spectral Pop, Were House – Ready yourselves for some supernatural genres for the rest of the year. The Summer will be dominated by this occult oriented downtempo chopped and screwed italo-house sort-of-extension-of Chillwave. There’s a bit of variation in these bands sounds – some straighter electro rock, some totally abstract, sampled and degraded into noise, but there are distinct central themes that make it a genuine happening.

Geometrical, upper/lower case and punctuation riddled band names. A reference or inclusion of sigils, symbolism, talismanic and/or ritualistic adornment…and by extension of this, a sense of –

Mystery.

Remixing – Chillwave might have had a few remixes and remixers, but this is next level. 80’s tracks and modern pop are the main sacrificial lambs of this genres and they are being eviscerated down to their essential elements in order to be recast as ghostly, demonic apparitions of their original forms. It’s a bit nepotistic in that respect, Mater Suspiria Vision seems to be the go-to guy for Ghost Drone edits involving an awful lot of reverb.

Women – Nearly all these bands involve female members or collaborators. By definition it is a genre that necessitates the inclusion of women (Witch) yet is not actually defined by sex as such. This is massive, seriously. Riot Grrrl was all about the Grrrl aspect, as in Girls doing the Rioting. This is not, it so subtley dependant on femininity it doesn’t need to force the issue. I didn’t really explain that as concisely as I realised it the other day, but that’s the gist.

Finally – where do you go to get it? The locus of the genre is DISARO Records in Houston. Go see their myspace for links to all these bands, downloads, images and more:

www.myspace.com/ffdisaro

The key release for the genre should be the White Ring 'Roses'/ oOoOO 'Seaww' Split 7", out on Swedish Emotion label - http://eeemotion.se/ - it has White Ring's epic blackened down happy hardcore with a really chilling feral screech for a lyric set against oOoOO's slowly unfolding horror show of pitched down vocals and eerie drone. As a release it backs the dancey side with the post-club comedown track really well and these are easily my two favourite tracks of the genre, if not the year. They're up there.

4 comments:

  1. great stuff but you missed a couple out:

    ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ

    Sleep Over

    SALEM (been around for a while but definitely Witch House)

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  2. I would also say that //Tense// are more EBM/electro/industrial, no?

    ReplyDelete
  3. oh also:
    Young Cream (Salem more breaky offshoot)
    and
    V▲GINA WOLF

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, you are right, on all counts. //TENSE// do stuff with Disaro though and that ebm soun d crosses back into a couple of these other bands so I put 'em in!

    On the DiS thread I said that I forgot Salem - probably becasue I was thinking 'DO NOT FORGET SALEM - because they started the theme'

    I properly forget ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ though, yeah.

    I haven't heard those last 2 yet.


    p.s. unrelatedly - New Menace Ruine album out on Monday!

    ReplyDelete