Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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teacake
Posts: 187
Joined: July 24th, 2011, 4:08 am
Location: Seattle, WA.

Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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I'm confident people will be honest enough here.

Your current Witch House project; did you create it after being inspired by a WH artist or did it already exist and just end up fitting into the WH scene?

I myself started Teacake about a year ago, but it was more a means of creating something that emulated the instrumentals of pop Hip-hop and R&B tracks as I've always loved the beats and hated the vocals. I was also initially inspired by Starky and Flying Lotus and Teacake was my third and smallest music project. Once I was turned onto Witch House I start taking the project in that direction and it eventually became my main (the other two have been more or less retired for unrelated reasons).

How 'bout you?
Pe† Ceme†ery
Posts: 181
Joined: May 23rd, 2011, 6:55 pm

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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I learned of Witch House late in 2010, and I caught the bug full-scale around January this year. I had a music degree and lots of experience making very evil, scary and dark sounding... classical avant-garde music at uni (#fail).

I heard a few drag edits that were relatively simple and liked em, so I downloaded Audacity and made a few, using techniques I knew but I hadn't ever used (History of Electronic and Computer Music module at uni... no practical component). Hey presto, nice drags. Bit the bullet and started using Ableton. I'm about 5 months in, and I am still very lazy but I am getting better as a producer.

So yeah, Witch House love came first, followed by my project. And by extension my label (3-4 months in)
puxel
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Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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2009 with ///▲▲▲\\\'s first EP and TEARIST, before they were hiphop beats and more like shoegaze.
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0hPeee
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Joined: September 19th, 2010, 8:51 am
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Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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i've been making dark, droney beats with distorted synths etc., since 2007, and when this whole thing came about, i just felt it was kind of similar to what i'd been doing.

my style is always evolving though, and it has definitely come to include more "WH-y" elements, although i don't know if it still really fits into the genre as such. maybe it does, but it's just a loose fit.
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K_Dub
Posts: 96
Joined: March 23rd, 2011, 5:47 pm
Location: Hertford, UK

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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I was making dub reggae out of mashed up samples on Ableton when someone at a party I was at in February this year was like "dude you should check salem and this guy called oooooooo or something". A month later and I'd bought the whole Tri-Angle catalogue and making my first WH mixtape. So, yeah, WH definitely came first for me. I think it gave me an outlet for all these weird ideas I'd been having and didn't know what to do with. youtube.com/shtrecords for my old stuff
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earlyspirit
Posts: 19
Joined: July 19th, 2011, 1:38 am

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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For me WH came first but it made the connection between multiple sounds I enjoyed. I used to listen to a lot of darker synthpop and industrial, had played in a variety of bands ranging from metal to shoegaze to post-rock, and enjoyed making ambient and dubstep music once I got my hands on soft-synths. At first, I didn't want to make witch house because of the dragged version of pop tracks but the more I messed with chopping and screwing vocal samples, the more I appreciated the genre and it started making sense for my own sound.
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mmmmmmmm
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Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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Alo all! this is my first post here for a reason. It's the straw that broke the camels back for me posting here. I really love this question because it's complicated for me.

Technically, what I release aren't so much projects, but fall under my main moniker Strange Powers. I've been releasing music under that particular name since 2006. All of my 'WH' related releases (bear with me, this is my first time actually referencing my own music as WH) Have been under that name. However, The last two solo albums released were very WH influenced. What complicates the matter is that I have a small hand in this genre's inception, as I have been in bands with SAINT of Modern Witch since before the genre existed. I actually work closely with MW and have produced releases and future releases for them as well as actually played a part in the band on stage. See, this is where it gets complicated for me.

I was already working on a darker turn of electronic music and even Harsh Noise as a relief to my earlier Hip Hop standards in the years before the genre was 'coined' and was even influenced by what SAINT was doing with MW and even by Pictureplane before I heard about the term WH. I moved back to Denver (spent 2 years in Austin) in Sept. of 2009 partially because I was excited about what they were doing, as well as felt it was more inspiring in the direction I had been going. Within a few months of hearing of how the term was coined and how someone tagged a bunch of bands on last.fm and all of this, I got curious about who was out there and being tagged this. SAINT was the one who introduced me to White Ring, oOoOO and SALEM, in about march of 2009. That coupled with the previous inspiration, basically changed my life. It was like they were in thee realm that i was already experimenting with. At the same time I was introduced to Gatekeeper, //TENSE// and Stalker. After seeing both ends of the spectrum and how it fit with what i was doing i pretty much lost my damn mind.

I started an alias on soundcloud around that time called Bl▲ck M▲ss and hunted down anyone else i could find associated with the genre. Tundra was around already, so were Myrrh Ka Ba, Ceremonial Dagger, I††, Ritualz, Ourobonic Plague, Stalker, How I Quit Crack, Mushy, etc. The first few tracks I put up were well received and I began work on what was to become the MMMMMMMM LP. Initially, I changed my alias around a couple times and landed on MMMMMMMM (8M) for quite some time. Eventually I decided to release the material under my main moniker and made the alias the title for the first release. I put that out on March 8 of this year as my first official release in the WH vein. (even though until now I avoided calling myself WH, always liked Okkvlt better).

so you tell me? what came first? the Wiccan or the egg? my point is it all seemed to happen at once somehow... so i guess, neither? or both.

cheers
#missinglink
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Blaholtzen
Posts: 32
Joined: June 13th, 2011, 12:00 am

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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I actually started making terrible industrial influenced songs that resembled with house in many ways (apart from being terrible) but when i discovered SALEM and later more witch house i got some better inspiration for what i was trying to do.
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audrey hørne
Posts: 57
Joined: January 19th, 2011, 6:47 am

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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I had a project called "Snake Eyes" that was more dance-techno music but definitely dark sounding. then one day I found a band called TRUST on myspace, and from there I found Salem. After listening to Salem and oOoOO I started writing more dragged out stuff.
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I††
Posts: 71
Joined: July 28th, 2010, 9:08 pm

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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Making electronic music since 96. It never really fit a genre well. Hell, it still doesn't really fit a genre well, but the people involved in the Witch House scene have been very kind. We were just happy to find like minded people with similar influences making kick ass music.
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FURTHER
Posts: 26
Joined: April 18th, 2011, 8:54 pm
Location: Wolverhampton, UK

Re: Which Came First: The Genre or Your Project?

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Maskman came first
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