Hunting for Witches

I should have known M.I.A.'s album /\/\/\Y/\ would be a portent to all of these producers calling their du jour genre witch-house...or at least that's what the blogosphere is calling these unicode monikered DIY producers.  We seem to no longer be in the era of chill-wave, where juggernauts like Neon Indian, Pictureplane, Toro y Moi and Memory Tapes graced our presence with fuzzed out, 80s inspired, psychedelic electronic music that seemed to bend everything from circuits to genres.  They dared people to classify them.  But it wasn't dark enough for the witch-house artist.  Like Goth being a response to Glam rock, it seems that Chill-wave/day-glo has got its response with the dark filled witch-house outfits cropping up all over the US (and a finger-full abroad from what I've seen).

Of course, as usual I'm late to the party.  The articles below are great primers on the genre, that will reduce redundancy to this post and introduce contradiction and pretentiousness, as well as nuggets of awesome:
Expatriarch's blogpost
The mothership (Pitchfork)
Drowned in Sound's Forum Post

Also here are the oft quoted distribution outfits  that push the sound out into the internet:
Disaro
Tri Angle

Better that there's some sort of outlet, because many of these names are impossible to google or get all hype-machiney with all their unicode triangles and crosses.  It's as if they obnoxiously chose impossible to spell and pronounce names to keep themselves away from the internet hive-mind (google).  Was this an attempt to keep the music pure?  Or at least the intent.  Because it definitely borrows, perverts and drags from genres I know intimately, or at least obsessed over at one time or another in the 90s.

Por ejemplo,  ///▲▲▲\\\ is now called Horse Macgyver, probably because nobody could spell or pronounce the band name correctly.  I'm not convinced though of the legitimacy of its witchyness though, very much has a Salem vibe.

So let me offer some perspective.  We have the godfather of witch house, which emphasizes the hip-hop slant to the genre.

Get Crunk!  (with Salem) 

And the other flag-bearer to listen to is of course Balam Acab

But what really separates these folks from low-fi hip hop producers?  Here's some White Ring for refreshment:

White Ring's lxC999

My conclusion is very little in technique (sampling/beatbox/MC).  But the replacment of rap's urban edge by this lust for the occult and the nostalgic makes it very different.  And this lust, I find is paralell, yet perverted from the lust for lost-youth and nostalgia that permeated day-glo (which is probably all spun out of control from M83).

But, witch-house does seem to demand some codes of conduct, in order to call yourself "witch-house". Mainly, that you must have a DIY attitude, which is where a lot of the name shenanigans came from, and so many of the people getting signed even by the smallest of record labels have probably transcended the witch house label.  The above example by White Ring is a monumental example of the genre.  Not much new, other than you're fuzzing it the hell out and a woman's voice is leading the charge.  This is rare in music...really.  Women are often not making genuinely dark music to begin with...as it often morphs into anger like Otep.

That and fuzz the hell out of your production, because within distortion are the happy accidents that cast your magic spells.

So are these nods to the likes of the Cocteau Twins?  You can definitely pick up on Shoegaze & Goth everywhere in the witch-house scene.  And of course the worship of vintage horror sensibility, for reference, Goblin:

The title track to Suspiria is kinda like, the root of all Witch-House IMHO

The unicode symbol names, the DIY video art, the overt references to the occult, and more jokes inside their hermetic circles than there are punk bands in NYC add up to a lot of pretentiousness in.  God warriors beware, this shit's definitely dark-sided.  Though admittedly, it's all really tongue-in-cheek and about as serious as the movie Warlock.  It can be a lot to process though.  Rather, let the music sublime into you like burning incense and let the ghosts do their thing to your brain.  It's often best not to try to fight them anyway, or you'll probably end up like the dude in Paranormal Acitvity.

Here's some homemade vidya art by oOoOO:  Note the use of triangles, trees and lightning along witht he traditional reaper representation and many nods in the music to the 80s and 90s.