Haunted: A Witch House Primer

Share:

As Donovan once said, it must be the season of the witch… house. Having trouble figuring out what all the buzz is about? Don’t worry: The truth is, the parameters of the burgeoning musical genre known as witch house are still blurry. Even the name “witch house” itself is cause for debate — the origins are unclear, but the label sounds like an attempt to pigeonhole the murky music into a dancefloor-friendly category. The music itself has a few shared characteristics — a dark, dreamy sound incorporating swooning synths at a drowsy tempo, pitched-down vocals and, generally, the feel of being trapped inside a haunted house — that make it both exhilarating and terrifying. In that way, it’s kind of like catching a glimpse of a ghost.

Despite the foreboding name and frightening sounds, witch house is actually more inclusive than it might appear at first listen. With roots in ambient, EBM (electronic body music), Chicago juke, dark-tinged synth-pop, trance, drone metal and screw, witch house has tendrils that caress the musical pleasure centers of fans of Throbbing Gristle, My Bloody Valentine, Swans, Brian Eno, and Gucci Mane alike.

Witch house-heavy labels like Tri Angle (a facet of seminal German techno label Kompakt), run by 20 Jazz Funk Greats blogger Robin Carolan, follow a Factory Records model of releasing records as keepsakes, paying close attention to album artwork and fetishizing a hazy nostalgia that’s as vital to the aesthetic as the music itself. If you want to hear these dark sounds and dance at the same time, there are parties like New York’s Todd “Pendu” Brooks and his Pendu Organization’s vital Pendu Disco, a.k.a. “Horror Scores For The Dancefloor.” Oh, and you can also consume witch house as a fashion statement. And a coffee mug.

Though various bands/DJs/producers may not align themselves with witch house as a genre (and it’s hard to blame them for that), Oneohtrix Point Never, Grouper, CFCF, Prince Rama, and Laurel Halo are among the names associated with the movement, which once counted among its numbers the now-defunct Pocahaunted, whose Bethany Cosentino went on to form the ridiculous sun-stoner group Best Coast.

With several major witch house releases recent or looming on the horizon,we present this introduction to five more witch house names to familiarize yourself with. The countdown to Halloween begins now.

Salem

The members of Salem (alternately written as SALEM or S4LEM, but for consistancy’s sake, we’re going with the simplest form) are arguably the poster children for the witch house movement. With their baggy, pentagram-laden look — think Stevie Nicks as a graver dancing at the Hacienda — their ominous album artwork (and even more frightening Flickr), and their molasses-paced horror-core sound, Salem are one of the most frustrating, polarizing, and exciting musical acts of the moment.

When the trio of Jack Donoghue, John Holland and Heather Marlatt performed at this year’s South by Southwest festival, they were met with crushingly negative response. They’re bored in interviews at best (other than this fascinating piece BUTT did on Holland): in the only existing video interview with Salem, when asked about fans and their relation to Salem’s music, Donoghue responds, “People will say to us, ‘We love this song, like how it’s about this thing that’s so powerful,’ and we’ll be like…what the hell are you talking about? But like, that’s cool.” And oh, yeah, Chris Weingarten and Owen Pallett notoriously (and, okay, hilariously) bickered on Twitter about the former’s portrayal of Salem’s forthcoming IAMSOUND debut King Night.

All this controversy (and all those Flickr photos of teddy bears and nooses) tends to overshadow the music, though, and that shouldn’t happen. The music Salem makes is a heady, gloriously crushing blend of the jittery “juke” sound perfected by the likes of Chicago’s DJ Nate, slowed-down southern horror-core rap, trance, and shoegaze. The title, kick-off track from King Night is Salem at their best — heady, irreverent (is that “O Holy Night”?), and punishing.

Bonus: “5Min2Live”, a straight-up, all out trance mix by Salem, a counterpoint to their chopped, screwed and destroyed post-apocalyptic “Raver Stay Wif Me” mix.

oOoOO

As oOoOO, San Fransisco-based Christopher Dexter Greenspan creates a dark, slow sound that’s a bit more accessible than that of his contemporary cousins, but every bit as rewarding. One of oOoOO’s finest moments is a snare-filled, bass-heavy scalpel to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” that has its origins in schaffel. Greenspan’s forthcoming self-titled EP for Tri Angle Records keeps one foot in pop and one foot in the darkness. “Hearts,” the first single from oOoOO, is everything an oOoOO song should be: pretty and twisted.

As a side note, oOoOO wins for our favorite witch house band name, with runner-up awards going to GL▲SS †33†H, GR†LLGR†LL and ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ.

Bonus: oOoOO remix Salem’s “Asia” by choking it within an inch of its life and then allowing it, slowly, to breathe again.

White Ring

White Ring, the NY-based duo of Kendra Malia and Bryan Kurkimilis, could just as easily label themselves “no wave” as “witch house,” with equal parts agreement and dissent. Jerking, rolling drum machines fall on top of themselves as the world falls in, Malia’s voice ranging from a coo to a shriek as she embodies the musical version of Samara from The Ring. White Ring are a guttural experience, and a must-see live act (which is rare praise in the witch house scene).

White Ring live at Cake Shop, courtesy Pendu

Bonus: Heart-on-sleeve emo-poppers Los Campesinos! remix White Ring’s “Suffocation”.

Zola Jesus

By far the most accessible of any artist on this list, Nika Roza Danilova, a.k.a. Zola Jesus, released her Stridulum ep early this year to deafening critical acclaim. The 21 year old’s vocal presence and bombast radiate from her pulsing tales of heartbreak — this lady can sing. After a series of murky records for labels like Sacred Bones, Zola Jesus cleaned up her production for Stridulum and, for the first time, used a dedicated microphone for her voice, which in and of itself is her music’s biggest and best instrument. The resulting songs, while more polished than her previous records, embody a new urgency and fierceness that were previously lost to tape hiss. Stridulum has been re-released as a full-length, Stridulum II, in the UK, and is about to be supplemented with another EP, Valusia, in the U.S. Oh, and Danilova is just now graduating college… with a double-major. Makes us wonder what we’ve done with our lives.

Bonus: Zola Jesus performing a live, dirge-like cover of “Somebody To Love”.

Nike7Up

Part of the fun of witch house is the way it reshapes and reframes other genres, particularly through the current fad of appropriating/slowing down pop, rap and R&B hits (see: CFCF’s recent mix for The Fader). No one dismantles pop better than the fittingly- (and, okay, ridiculously-) named Nike7Up, who channels much of his recorded output through a pop lens. He’s also the most mysterious figure on this list, choosing to speak through brain-melting musical edits rather than interviews or any other form of authentic personal information (his bio on Facebook lists him as “Siamese twins separated at birth,” and it’s only as a result of this Pinglewood article that we’re assigning Nike7Up the male gender in singular form). And that’s fine with us. This is witch house to party to, so party on.

Bonus: NikE7Up’s “JUSTIN BIEBER ONE TIME|ph0n3ÅpøçaL¥p$e¡nƒ¡N¡†y420Mix