(2010 May 24) Expatriarch publishes 'Trying to define 'witch house' can be a real drag'

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(2010 May 24) Expatriarch publishes 'Trying to define 'witch house' can be a real drag'

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https://web.archive.org/web/20100601062 ... real-drag/
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Trying to define “witch house” can be a real drag
24th of May, 2010 by Joey Hansom

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Triangles and crosses and slashes, oh my. Years since the initial awkwardness of saying !!!’s name out loud, we now have a whole new slew of bands to worry about: B▲L▲M▲C▲B, †‡†, //TENSE//, oOoOO, and the list goes on. My first thought was, “Oh, some kids discovered the special character palette and decided to start a band”, but after listening to the music, it’s clear that there’s also a shared musical sensibility: processed loops, lo-fi beats, shadowy textures, indecipherable vocals, ambience and distortion. Syrupy Southern hip-hop and Factory Records doom-pop seem to be equally influential, which sounds a bit odd, but not so surprising, considering the last decade’s hybrid-driven trend starting with Kid A and “B.O.B.” and mashups. And while many of these cryptic bands are still finding their voice, there is already a good deal of compelling sounds circulating, thanks to indie labels like Houston-based Disaro and Brooklyn-based Tri Angle (whose logo is also a triangle — isosceles, if you simply must know).

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Other band names like Modern Witch and Salem thankfully stick with the traditional alphabet, and they also clue us in on the occult imagery commonly found in this phenomenon. But what we need now is a legit term for this psuedogenre! “Drag” has caught on, which makes sense insofar as it describes a characteristic sludgy pace, but the word’s other connotations bring to mind boredom, car racing and transvestism. “Witch house” is equally popular, and while “witch” well reflects the spellbinding moods and magickal imagery, “house” doesn’t fit, as house music has always maintained a joyous connection with the dancefloor, something definitely absent here. This music sounds like the product of introversion and disconnectedness — I wonder if that’s why many of these acts have no (or very few) upcoming shows listed in their MySpaces.

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If we are really making it our goal to find a proper name for this whole sound, might I suggest incorporating the word “dub”? Most of these beatmakers are manipulating pre-recorded sounds, a technique whose origins are rooted in dub music. What’s more is that “dub” purportedly comes from the Jamaican Creole word for “ghost”. “Witch dub”? “Swamp dub”? “Dubschlepp”? Then again, maybe “dub” is already too associated with reggae. “Monsterclash”? No, that will never do. It has to be something simple and catchy. “Murk”? “Crafty”? “Hexcore”? “Ouija”? OK, let’s just forget about that human urge to try to categorize everything into neat, marketable labels.

Although noticeable aspect is the bands’ emphasis on images (AIDS-3D, for example, is more of a multimedia art entity than a band), they tend to keep their own likenesses and identities hidden. If a head appears, the face is probably obscured or artistically mangled. Fewer fashion shoots and press photos; more nightmarish collages and satanic signifiers. This all seems to be part of the willful obscurity as seen in the esoteric band names. Google yields “Your search †‡† did not match any documents.” But there seems to be an element of camp as well, almost like dressing up for Halloween. (So maybe “drag” is an appropriate term after all.)

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Although no artists I checked with felt any connection to this apparent movement or the term “witch house”, I went to eponymous label owner Robert Disaro to see what he thought. “I like the term ‘witch house’, it kinda fits the whole dark heavy sound. I’ve also seen it spelled ‘haus’, so I guess it’s how ever you wanna take it. Keep in mind, Disaro isn’t specifically a witch house/haus or drag label. We’re just a label.” When I asked about the uniting factors of it all, he summed it up as “independent music by mindfucked artists all working together to bring music back to where it should be. Right now musicians are so controlled by labels with what they should do and what they can’t do… All this high gloss shit on TV and radio (even college radio) that’s the new now next, that shit isn’t indie to me. Art and music need to stay together and it hasn’t been like that.”

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As I realized that many of these acts were female-led or had female members, and as “witch” is obviously a gendered word, I asked Disaro if gender had anything to do with it. “There are lots of women on Disaro that are banging out the based-out beats and doing vocals, like White Ring, Passions, //TENSE//, Crones, The Beauty, Pregnancy Pact, Modern Witch, How I Quit Crack, along with all the others on different labels: Creep, Salem, Sleep ∞ Over, etc.”

While I’m still trying to digest that list of suggestions, not to mention all the other acts I’ve discovered by clicking around, here are a few that have captured my interest for the moment:

Passions: sounds a bit like Joy Order remixed by Afrikraft Bambaatwerk
The Beauty: spacious electro-shoegaze
Salem: Nine Inch Nails meets Enya, chopped and screwed
Modern Witch: danceable paranoid dissonance
Sleep ∞ Over: lo-fi dirge ballads
Pregnancy Pact: squiggly noise and tapefuckery

Let’s see where this trend is headed. In the meantime, I have some new material for the next episode of Expatriarch Radio

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