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A Musical Peak Inside Witch House
Witch House is a darkly atmospheric electronic music microgenre that began to take shape in the late 2000’s/early 10’s. Its influence can be seen bubbling up to the more mainstream surface in pop music hits like Katy Perry’s Dark Horse or the edgier music and style of Billie Eilish. A worldwide phenomenon, it took a spoonful of Goth, a pinch of Ethereal, and a helping of Trap and combined it into a spooky electrobrew decorated with occult imagery that would be a bit overwrought if not for the fact that the bands never seem to entirely be taking themselves too seriously. One of my favorites, that is pretty exemplary of the genre, is Australian artist, Goo Munday’s, Eyes. Thanks to streaming a lot of DJs on Twitch during the Pandemic Shut Down, I’ve grown fond of Witch House, which some of my favorites mixed in with their Industrial and Goth sets. I thought I’d take a quick look behind the curtain into the mysterious Witch House with six artists, whose work has been labeled as being part of the genre (though as often time is true with music, they are all uniquely individual in their own right). You can stream their music from Hoopla or Freegal.
Ic3peak
Many Witch House bands incorporate unusual spellings of their names, songs, or album titles using things like triangles and Unicode symbols. Hence the spelling of one of my favorite Witch House bands Ic3peak. Ic3peak formed in 2013, in Russia, by duo Anastasiya Kreslina and Nikolay Kostylev. They have recorded songs in both English and Russian, although much of their more recent music is in the later. Sometimes categorized as rap, Anastasiya’s vocals although at times sung, other times more resemble chanting. Freegal features several of their albums. Some of their more popular tracks are Плак-Плак (Boo-Hoo), Марш (Marching), and Смерти Больше Нет (Death No More). If you are a fan of South African experimental electronic rap act Die Antwoord, this could be a new favorite.
Δaimon
Δaimon, frequently spelled as Aaimon consists of the San Diego couple Brant Showers and Nancy Lutz. I found their self-titled album, available to stream from Freegal, suspenseful and majestic with haunting vocals. You can also check out EPs and remixes of songs including a terrific version of Exu Rei, remixed by popular Witch House artist, Mr. Kitty.
Sidewalks & Skeletons
The United Kingdom’s Sidewalks and Skeletons is the solo-project of Jake Lee, who started his career as a metal guitarist, before focusing on creating dark electronic music and to me you can see some of his early influence in the metal genre in his current work. You can check out the Sidewalks & Skeletons track Exhume on the Occult Box Compilation from Cleopatra that also offers up a sample of other delightfully macabre music which is worth a listen.
Pastel Ghost
Austin, Texas based Vivian Moon is the force behind Pastel Ghost. I enjoy Pastel Ghost’s distorted vocals which makes me think of a more electro-rave form of the shoegaze, I loved back in the 90’s. Pastel Ghosts is a bit more ethereal and a little less spooky than some others on this list. Freegal features a plethora of Pastel Ghost’s work including a remix of Shadows done by Sidewalks and Skeletons as well as a version done by Mr. Kitty.
Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles are a Canadian group whose name came from a commercial for a toy for She-Ra’s castle, which included the lines “The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles” and “Crystal Castles, the source of all power.” Probably the most well known of the bands I’m writing about, you can borrow all four of their albums from Hoopla and at some BCCLS Libraries. The sprinkle of video game like noises in some of their songs has also had their music described as Ninetendocore. If you enjoy fellow Canadian avant-garde singer Grimes, then Crystal Castles is definitely one for you to check out.
Blvck Ceiling
Dan Cuccia known by Blvck Ceiling is from Spokane, Washington. You can check out his album Throne from Hoopla Digital. I saw one review comparing it to the soundtrack of a Dungeon Crawler and I could definitely see this one adding some ambience to your next Dungeons and Dragons game. My favorite track off the album is Key to the Garden.
Are you a fan of Witch House? Share some of your favorite bands and their songs in our comments!
Written by:
Aimee Harris
Head of Information and Digital Services
Best witch house albums
Hello Ritualz and thank you for joining us on Brutal! I think this is your first time on Brutal so let’s start off with a warm-up question. What are three of your favorite albums of all time and why?
Ritualz: Hey, thanks for having me. My three favorite albums are "Antichrist Superstar" by Marilyn Manson, "The Downward Spiral" by Nine Inch Nails, and "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" by the Smashing Pumpkins. I am usually into more underground stuff but you can't argue these are the best of the best. I like all three because they excel at doing something different on every song. It's something important to me and that I've always tried to do with my own music. I hate when bands just make the same song over and over again. I like that "Antichrist Superstar" and "The Downward Spiral" are really good at being aggressive albums while being super emotional and melodic. Even the noisier arrangements on both albums have some sort of melody or sound musical, also something I look for in music. I like aggressive music, I like pop music, so it's great to have both at the same time. "Mellon Collie" is just amazing songwriting. Billy Corgan is a genius. The best riffs, the best hooks, powerful, angsty. Very 90s.
I’d like to do a bit of a dive into the history of Ritualz. When did you discover the witch house scene and why did you decide to create music in this genre?
Ritualz: I first listened to Salem in 2009 but didn't think much of it at the time. I found it tagged as "gothic chillwave" and I was expecting a sadder Washed Out. I listened to White Ring a couple of months later and they blew me away. I realized it was not that different from the music I was doing myself before, just slower. I never considered making that style of music or even making music anymore at that point, but I had literally nothing to do during spring break so I opened up Reason and made 'gOth bb' and '>>>>▲ Ritualz interview
A Different Type Of Doom
O’l buddy o’l housemate Phil dropped me a line during the week.
A quick message to say that Witch House ‘magi majoris’ Salem have a new album out – “Fires In Heaven”. Their first album for a decade.
Phil said it made him think of me. It prompted a flurry of messages between us, our first communication since September.
Until he dropped me a line I hadn’t thought about Salam or their first album King Night in years. I was *really* into Witch House. An early adopter. In 2010 I was a hipster with a moustache, a racing bike, and a permenant hangover.
Burial’s 2007 Untrue is an album that defined a moment for my generation. When Ahmet Sabancı came to visit he told me he finally understood the album having seen London in winter at night in the rain.
Whenever I hear Untrue, I feel a sense memory of 5.30am bus rides to work in the rain. Playing the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series on my DS. Inhaling 3 or 4 books a week as the bookshop I worked in let us borrow them like a library service. It was the soundtrack to the Global Financial Crisis, and long train rides back to Kent to see an Ex.
My memories of 2010 are cloured with different hues and tones. The Cameron–Clegg coalition. The student Millbank revolt, The prospect of Endless Austerity. Fallout New Vegas and the Bitcoin Pizza. The Aforementioned Ex was now an actual Ex and I was miserable.
Then along came Witch House or Drag as it was then known.
Witch House oozed into existence through cracks in reality via forums, music blogs, and p2p platforms like soulseek. Made by what we would then called Laptop Musicians disconnected from the ‘club scene’. Its only connection to club music being the paronomasia of the name. All the early musicians cited Burial as a major influence in interviews. Dubstep wasn’t yet what it would become. Hyperdub’s Dubstep Allstars Vol 1 was released the same year as Witch House became ‘a thing’.
Parts of the press met the genre with skepticism and indignation. Incredulous that the internet could just declare a genre a ‘thing’ without any supporting context. Where was its megatextal topology? And also how dare artists choose to have ungooglable names like oOoOO , Gr†ll Gr†ll or ~▲†▲~ or XXYYXX.
They were not barriers to the art. These names worked as signposts, sigils or signifiers. They were the first stirrings of online expression and identity that would go on to become Post-Internet Art.
The world is now dominated by microgenres and subcultures. Shaping perception of reality via niche hashtags and network effects. For better or worse someone at Spotify finds or makes up a genre name and then populates a playlist with content. The idea that people would get mad about an online genre having a name and coming from nowhere now seems quaint. But 2010 was a very different world. People still owned and controlled their own music collections. We carried iPods in the opposite jean pockets to our somewhat smartphones. 2010 was the year we got front facing cameras and the launch of Instagram. We were reading a thousand think pieces a day about selfies and their narcissism.
With the launch of Instagram came filters. I wrote a note on them back in 2012: on filters vs autotune.
Instagram filters, process, alter, and re-express the whole of the digital object in a new form.
007 :: auto-tune the muse
Auto tune however is applied (in general) to a melody line – a digital element or subset of the whole audio work. in production terms an instagram filter is more like an EQ – this (to me) is an important distinction.
Witch House is a musical genre drenched in drones and distortion. Beats chopped and screwed, nerve-jangling samples and gothic content. A tonal or emotional filter applied to the music. Its sonic palette wasn’t the faux nostalgia of an Instagram filter like 1977. But instead a saudadic anxiety for the future.
The title track of Salem’s 2010 album King Night sounds like the bad dream that we are still living though.
King Night’s opening track sounds like the expired film I was shooting on my ’91 Canon Sure Shot Max looks.
This is Phil in 2010 This is Me in 2010Witch House sounded like neighbours having a party next door. It sounds like drowning your sorrows in the bath. It sounds like drug a comedown, ketamine binges and smartphone fuelled technological acceleration. Music by people with cracked versions of Fruity Loops or Reason. The turn of the decade was also the shift from desktop to laptop. Easy access to the tools of production allowed for experimentation. Music that an artist wanted to make, not what an audience wanted to hear.
The supporting context that the press was lamenting was actually the media environment they were embedded in. Pitchfork was still a kingmaker, Blogspots were posting and hosting weird LP rips as zip files, music came from Rapidshare or Megaupload. Twitter and Facebook were still nascent evils – the latter I’d already quit. I don’t think that Witch House would or could become ‘a thing’ today. There isn’t the media environment for it.
Spotify’s algorithms make careers. Not culture.
Grimes was still a long way from making RAXy power pop and dating Billionaires. I like to remind people that Grime’s first album was a DUNE concept album. I still remember standing in a basement in Shoreditch hearing a Witch House remix of Shadout Mapes flowing seamlessly into oOoOO’s Remix of Lindsay Lohan’s – I Live for the Day.
I was a very different person in 2010. The world was a different place too. The doom I felt in 2010 was a different doom to that of 2020. Everything I’ve lived through, the good and the bad was still on the horizon.
Witch (hehe) brings me to 2020’s Fires in Heaven. It … just sounds … so similar to King Night. I don’t feel that the album’s sensibilities are as dark as the first album. Nor is it as wonky, and with my old man crotchety production hat on – there is too much treble for my liking.
This isn’t to say that it isn’t well produced – far from it. The album was mixed by Shlohmo. His 2011 album Bad Vibes remains a highlight of the decade.
It’s not that I don’t like it, I do think it’s really well produced, and the tracks Starfall and Die With Me are excellent.
Salem are clearly still in the same place as they were in 2010. Less lonely perhaps. I mean; Salem’s Donoghue has a production credit on Kaneys ‘Yeezus’, so things can’t be all bad. My dissatisfaction with the album, I feel, is largely due to the last decade of doom that I’ve experienced.
Witch House isn’t in the same place as 2010. During the intervening decade its oozed into pop culture as almost an aesthetic layer. It soundtracked movies throughout the early Twenty Teens. Ryan Gosling’s Drive has defined noir for the last decade.
It’s devastating lo-fi synths and trap beats are now all over mumble rap and hip hop at large. Witch house has blended and fused with Synthwave. Its rode alongside developments in ambient and experimental.
That gave us tracks like XXYYXX’s 2012 track hazy About You. A master piece. A track I posted to Tumblr earlier this year with the note: This is one of those tracks and accompanying video that defined(s) a whole era of indie electronic music production.
It’s certainly present throughout all of Travis Scott’s career. Chance The Rapper even samples XXYYXX. The gothic vibes found in Billie Eilish’s Bury A Friend still ride the edge of Witch Houses’ influence in my mind.
The Tumblrs, Musicians and MySpace holdouts influencing Witch House in 2010 knew the world that we were being led towards was absolute bullshit. It’s aesthetics pressaged the return to Tarot Town we have arrived at.
It’s blown out visuals and sonic landscape announced the coming decades ‘Witchy Fems’, Hex’s on Trump and the occult renaissance. How much conviction its cloak of aethetics had I’m not sure. But it was a starting gun for the rise of astrology and the death of consensus reality.
In retrospect, Drag wouldn’t have been a bad name for it, had it stuck.
Its strange artist names spoke to online performance of self and identity. The theatricality of the live shows (at least in London) suited that original name too. Basement venues draped in black cloth painted with blood red pentagrams. An audience off its face on the last of the legal mephedrone bought off the Internet from China.
Facing the Doom to come together.
When you make a witch house track the drone comes first. Then you chop the trap beats around the oscillations, last come the vocals.
The sonic reality is created around the artist’s desire for vibes.
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