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Ghosts in the Machine
by Joe Colly, posted May 24, 2010
"I feel like so much of music development happens online now. Local scenes aren't as important. Kids in Florida or Paris can seek out whatever music they want, and bands around the world can seek out like-minded artists from anywhere for inspiration. So I don't know if it can be called a 'scene' in the traditional sense of the word, but it seems like there's definitely a growing group of people making aesthetically similar music that people they've never met are calling 'drag'."
That's Christopher Dexter Greenspan, who records as oOoOO, talking about the burgeoning style of music that he and a handful of others are developing. It's been called "drag," "witch house," and "haunted house," but like most subgenres these days, there's no official name for it. And like Greenspan points out, it's probably not a scene in the way we've come to understand the term. What "drag" is, so far at least, is a group of young, geographically scattered artists concurrently exploring ghostly, slow-moving electro-pop, each with their own unique spin.
The term "drag" is partly a reference to screwed and chopped hip-hop, the syrupy style cooked up by DJ Screw and others in 1990s Houston, and was first used by the band Salem to describe their music. Salem took screwed and chopped's pacing-- its heavy, hypnotic pull-- and combined it with spooky synths and vocals to create an eerie, cavernous sound. This new batch of artists, which includes Balam Acab, White Ring, and Creep, are taking this idea in different directions. Houston hip-hop is still central, but they're also toying with dub, goth, current electro, ambient house á la KLF's Chill Out, and even chart pop.
Beyond even the aesthetic influence, "drag" does feel like a close relative to screwed and chopped. With its purposefully sluggish bpm and manipulated vocals, chopped and screwed turned no-nonsense street rap into something moodier and more psychedelic. It was an underground, even subversive genre, tied to syrup abuse and its mixtapes circulated among peers. And in a sense, that's what the "drag" musicians are doing with pop-- twisting it and slowing it down, making it druggier, and for now, working in a loose scene that's unrelated to a lot of what's happening in indie.
Each artist has his own take: Balam Acab sounds almost like rudimentary dubstep, oOoOO's songs are ethereal and sample heavy, and White Ring are on the darker edge of synth-pop. But they share some common traits. "Drag" tracks are always beat-driven but molasses-paced-- the bass is prominent, but drowsy and languid. Vocals are there, but no one's singing upfront. (Typically, vocals are manipulated in some way and buried in the mix.) It's not necessarily tech-y music-- there's a human quality to these songs but it's ghostly and distorted, as if the tracks themselves are haunted. Burial's Untrue and the Knife's Silent Shout are obviously key influences.
So far the sound is centered on a few small labels, notably Houston's Disaro and Tri Angle, a new imprint founded by Robin Carolan of 20jazzfunkgreats. Tri Angle is primarily a dance label and its growing roster includes acts that aren't "drag", like house musician Slava. Carolan is wary of the term. "I feel uncomfortable with this 'drag movement' because I feel like, at least the people signed to my label-- Balam, oOoOO, and Creep-- are all approaching music in a different way," he says. If pressed, he does believe "if there's one contemporary music influencing this scene, it's probably hip-hop."
That these ostensibly indie artists share an interest in hip-hop isn't a surprise. They're young Internet-era listeners with tastes that span from commercial pop all the way to niche club sounds like juke and UK funky. Creep's Lauren Dillard cites Hyperdub and Nicki Minaj as current inspirations, for example. Carolan thinks this broad listening and engagement with pop is important. "Hip-hop and R&B, in essence, is a commercial kind of music," he says. "But when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it's sonically at least really strange music. And there's so much you can do with that. I'm surprised it's taken so long for it to start being experimented with by people who aren't in that world."
One of the artists playing with these parameters is 19-year-old college student Alec Koone, who records as Balam Acab. Koone made his way to Tri Angle almost by chance, posting a couple tracks to MySpace over a winter break. Carolan came across them and immediately scooped him up. "I found out he'd just started making stuff and had put that MySpace page up just a day before," says Carolan. "And my mind just kind of went crazy thinking of all the possibilities that could happen with this guy-- all the things he could make in the future."
A music-education major making songs for several years (but only recently as Balam Acab), Koone started out with noise and drone before experimenting with beats. His tracks, like the lurching "See Birds", have a deft melodic touch and are built almost completely with found samples. "It starts with an idea I get in my head and I just try to create that idea with samples," he says. "I don't use that much 'real' music in them at all." Though he has an ear for the murky low-end usually associated with dubstep, Koone doesn't listen to much bass music. "I listen to Burial and Flying Lotus, but I've never been exposed to much other dubstep, techno, or dance music," he says.
Even if these artists aren't moved by dubstep in particular, they all have an appreciation for Burial. Making club music somber and surreal is one of Burial's talents, and the "drag" musicians look to do the same with their own skewed pop. Some of the elements and textures of "drag" tracks are rooted in club sounds-- a heavy emphasis on synths, insistent 4/4 beats-- but they're treated to sound crude and ghostly. Like Burial, these artists use vocal sampling to inject a sense of longing and despair. The feeling you get from a Burial track-- like the "holding you/ Couldn't be alone" refrain in "Archangel", equally poignant and chilling-- is the same mood that ripples through many "drag" cuts.
Greenspan, aka oOoOO (pronounced "oh"), who is San Francisco-based, is also a Burial disciple without clear ties to club culture. "Untrue is one of my favorite albums," he says. "It's weird, because I think dubstep beats are corny, but somehow I love his."(Many of the top recent dubstep artists--Joker, Guido, Mount Kimbie, James Blake--are also focusing on its more abstract, psychedelic less clubby aspects.)Rather than techno, Greenspan absorbs lots of Top 40 and experimental music. ("Ludacris, Young Jeezy, Nicki Minaj, Usher... Broadcast and the Focus Group," he rattles off). And not surprisingly, his tracks are more varied than some of his peers. The unsettling "NoSummr4u" falls in line with the "drag" approach, but others, like "Mumbai" and "Seaww", take on Middle Eastern sounds and sparse, robotic funk.
Also on Tri Angle is Creep, the production duo of Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard. Flax is a veteran house DJ (and Fischerspooner's tour DJ), and they listen to "a lot of classic house and old freestyle stuff," Dillard says. But their sound skews pop. "They're very influenced by house and the UK bass scene, but at the same time their music is quite dreamy," says Carolan. "It's more like some kind of ethereal dub/pop thing." Creep is a new project, and they're still working on tracks, but have attracted some notable guest vocalists already, including Romy Madley Croft from the xx.
The other label most associated with "drag" is Houston's Disaro, which was started by Robert Disaro and owleyes (Jim Weigel). The imprint is home to New York's Fostercare as well as White Ring, the duo of Bryan Kurkimilis and Kendra Malia. White Ring's tracks are maybe the most openly scary-sounding of all these acts. In their formula, icy synths and coarse beats provide the backdrop for Malia's eerie vocals, which give the music an alarming, anxious quality. They're into current rap ("Waka Flocka mixtapes... producers like Shawty Redd and Drumma Boy," says Kurkimilis) and hip-hop production is central to their approach. Tracks like "icx999" feel something like a cavernous take on 90s gangster rap, complete with gunshot sound effects.
All of these artists are relatively new, and few have even released an EP yet, so it's difficult to say where this sound will go. The encouraging thing, though, is that even with acts working from a common aesthetic base, there isn't much overlap. In most cases, they're starting at the same point but headed down drastically different paths. "Everyone on the label is brand-new," Carolan says of the Tri Angle acts. "They've only just started making their music in the last six months or so-- and everyone is kind of figuring out their sound as they go along. Which is kind of nerve-wracking but exciting at the same time because you don't know what you're going to get."
Below find a sampling of tracks from some of these artists.
MP3: Balam Acab: "See Birds"
MP3: Balam Acab: "Heavy Living Things"
MP3: White Ring: "icx999"
MP3: oOoOO: "NoSummr4u"
MP3: oOoOO: "Seaww"
Creep: "Jessica King" [Link is dead]
MP3: Fostercare: "Heat High"
MP3: ///▲▲▲\\\: "Spit Shine"
MP3: xix: "Deep Void"
MP3: Silent Diane: "Harmonikai"