REVIEW: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Time (Disaro)

GuMMy†Be▲R! drops another ep of his increasingly glamorous take on post-club electronics in the evolving collection of sounds of what was once called Witch House and is now not really known as anything, so disparate and far flung have many of its previously chief proponents been cast from each other. Time picks up where Herr Gummy left us with his last release Oakland but there's another level of development in the production - again, this guy just can't stop getting better. The beats are feeling more intuitive, the sounds becoming more substantial ad the tracks themselves bearing greater presence. Far removed from his first productions involving the garbled voices of children, gunshots and little else. 

Among the highlights of the nine tracks the stuttering house of the opening Cognitive Ascension evolves as its name implies, adding waves of melody that push the conscious up into sweaty peaks; the crystal clear heat haze of Sleeping in Dubai and its infectious treble drop, Astroid's bass throb and glassy counter rhythm, Fractured serves up a soundtrack to a lazy Californian beach side drive and the dreamy Friendzone vocalled Can't Go Wrong is pitchshifted into a subtle state of bliss.

The physical release came out at the end of August (didn't realise I'd had this on repeat so long!) on Disaro Records, limited to 200 CD copies,so it's probably all gone - check the status - but you can still get it digitally from the Disaro Bandcamp HERE

PREVIEW: Alchemy @ Palihouse, Hollywood (Tonight!!!)

Here's a last minute preview for all my Californian readers. Alchemy is a multimedia night of occult ghost drone drag and witch house related performance put on by my good friend and able master of ceremonies Clint Catalyst. This is the second event he has put on, the first getting the dance club pick of the week in LA Weekly, and all for free too - Cosmotropia creating visual carnage, Robert Disaro doing his thing and Zoetica Ebb telling fetishitic stories of her life over the top. Sounds like an interesting event, as out of the ordinary as you should expect from a genre of music as multifarious as the wytch hauze.

REVIEW: ISVOLT - A DISARO Compilation

ISVOLT - A DISARO Compilation
Robot Elephant Records
ORDER

This is the long-awaited DISARO artists compilation, released on London's Robot Elephant (run by the God Don't Like It guys), and if anyone approaches this thinking it will explain Witch House to them in one sitting, or offer them an easy in to the genre they're going to come out the other side even more confused or worse, more mentally compromised, than when they went in. This is a prism to fracture their preconceptions into seven shades of black light (or nine, if the analogy covers ever track on here) and drops subtle clues that there's a whole lot more to discover. No answers here, although this is a genre that constantly poses more questions and throws up more conundrums as part of its raison d'etre. This is essential, let's just make that clear right the now. As a guide to a genre it's a peerless companion to the multitude of mixes and blog comps out there, and as a label overview, its flawless.

Starting with the unholy blackened cacophony of †‡†'s Misery Walk it drops straight onto the beat with the scenery smashing bass howl of Party Trash. A bottom end that sucks up all the attention, bowling over the lightly played primitively pretty keys that would pick out a straight melody if they weren't getting blasted into a spidery scrawl. Next up it's the Arctic warehouse euphoria of Fostercare's Cold Light a track every DJ should keep in their box, the stuttering hi hat, echoic vocal exhortation and constant threat of a massive peak breaking out at any time cold be dropped into any set to redirect it and leave the field open to all sorts of directions out of it. Immense. //TENSE// sound like an overly buff IDM Blank Dogs. That deep lunged Ian Curtis intonation, sombre, but earnest and fronted by a muscular petrol headed throb that surrounded that metallic piston melody and oiled rhythm, the whole track unnervingly dirty, masculine and fetishistic. It's a sound that follows through into a more streamlined feminine version in Modern Witch's Your Life's A Movie, which flows along clean, supple lines but still retains a feral presence. Mater Suspiria Vision provides a rush trademarked ghost-drone, with possessed, shackled voices, chained to a bed of needling synth lines that overlap and slither forward into ///HORSE MACGYVER\\\'s Nod; one of the most invigorating artists, and the more ridiculously competent at conjuring a sense of dread from a few minimal tones drawn from short-circuited noise boards. Finally, and quite prominently, Raw Moans horrible ballad seals the set. Which is to say, it's a ballad in the style of, say, George Michael, but with a discordant atonal melody running at odds to the sighing vocal harmony, with the space in between filled with an aviary of mechanical birds, or a cave of robot bats,depending how occulty you want to take it. It's not occult at all, it just sounds healthily wrong, and a such is a fitting kiss off to the years most welcome label slash scene primer.

The album is released on Monday and to celebrate Robot Elephant are bringing Mater Supiria Vision, Fostercare and Robert Disaro to play the launch party at The Den + Centro. Pretty incredible line-up.

ISVOLT Witch House Compilation Tracklisting and Preorder Link

You can now preorder the LP or CD version of ISVOLT, the long-time coming God Don't Like It witch house compilation in collaboration with Disaro Records!

http://robotelephant.bigcartel.com/product/preorder-rer004-isvolt-disaro-compilation


The release features many of my standout artists from around the witch house realm and pushes it's sound boundaries out far enough to incorporate the widest range of sounds found within the genre,  elements of Hip Hop, Industrial, EBM, Shoegaze, Noise, Witch House and Drag - Looks liek it could serve as a good primer for the uninitiated - though not as good as MINE. Ha.

Some of the tracks included are exclusive to this record, with many of these artists havign never seen a physical release at all.

You've got a bit of a wait, as preorders will be shipped December 1st but this is one hell of a line up for a release - check out all this prime witch house on a gloriuous full sized 12" .

Track listing:

†‡† - Misery Walk
Fostercare - Cold Light
///HORSE MACGYVER\\\ (formerly ///▲▲▲\\\) - Nod
Modern Witch - Your Life Is A Movie
//TENSE// - Versus Man
Party Trash - Skyclad
White Ring - LxC999
Raw Moans - Nectarine
Mater Suspiria Vision - Ritualz of the Crack Witches

While you're waiting, here's a teaser for the album in the form of White Ring's LxC999.

PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS

This is an interesting one, as befits this interesting juncture we find ourselves at as the subgenre eddies of Chillwave and Witch House spin off into different shapes, some remingling and others whirling further from the motherpool that is Hypnogogic Pop. 80's + cognitive dissonance = 2010.  Sharing a similarity in ambience to Ducktails with their languid tropical shimmertone that sits them firmly in the Chillwave camp there is also a malevolence in the way PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS dismember and recast radio hits of the 80's that is one of the gory signatures of Witch House.  That and the geometry in the name. Sympathetic sampling is one of Chillwave's central tenets, but over on the darker side its more about the torturing, like some kind of payback for all those times trapped with the radio tuned to a local Golden Hits.   Their top friends on myspazz are Kria Brekkan, Washed Out, Disaro and How I Quit Crack. There's some kind of coordinates for you there.

Here's two tracks to celebrate and demonstrate the fork in the road that we're getting to chose a route down.

First, take I Will Always Love You - a remix, reworking or ritual sacrifice (whichever way you want to spin it) so profoundly simple, sinister and unnerving the Master Butcher would be proud to hang it in alongside his greatest love songs. Check the way the track gets sucked into a dismal vortex around the 4 minute mark, then pops back out into it's parallel dimensional form of euphoria. Beautiful freaky. Then listen to Beach Bubble and just lay back and relax as it's soporific heatwave fans out over your body slowly brushing across your skin in waves of lilting intensity as the clouds gently shade the colour of its rays.

VIDEO: White Ring - Roses

It's Friday in the PM, time to get something fierce on! Gonna start doing this every week from now on, round about this time posting up something juiced to kick it up a little. Last week I did Sleigh Bells, this week its White Ring. Looks like a massive part of this year is going to be all about Witch House for me - dark, spooky werehouse & beat-heavy keygaze! Get ready to herald in a load of occult-oriented takes on olde gynrys!

No, I'm not apologising for that.

Look out for the Disaro label, oOoOO, Mater Suspiria Vision, Deep Cave, Gr†LLGR†LL, twYlYZoNe -but for now, White Ring:

This may not be super fast but it carries the intensity of a thousand moonless nights; sounding like Crystal Castles getting k-holed into a corner and fighting their way back out again. Danceable, really pretty, pretty ugly, totally fucked.