Reasons [Not] to be Cheerful Pt. 1 (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Triangle)
Hello Bloglin, I’m Nattymari. I listen to a lot of music. Occasionally I make my own. Some of it can be found here. And some more here. Dub and Screw music have ruled my life for a long time now. A lot of the things I like are considered strange. Dark even. By now they are normal to me. I like to play video games and watch a lot of Japanese movies. My favorite media format is tape, because it deteriorates with every play.
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Witch House may be the first true cybercvlt. Like any cult, it takes its cues from the interweb’s major religions: the 1337speek of the haxxor, the Unicode tagging of the Gam3rKl4ns and the musical language of the bootleg/mashup kids. A blitzkrieg blend of the Temple ov Psychick Youth and the Church of Subgenius, Witch House mirrors nearly every aspect of today’s information addled society.
To an outsider, it is easy to shrug it off as fad. A fashion statement: punctuated with recycled occult imagery, oft-amateurish darkwave and half-assed remix. What this outsider fails to grasp, however, is that, once initiated, all these things make perfect sense within the context of the subculture. And subculture it is. In fact, Witch House contains nearly all the benchmarks of a full blown culture. Still, like any subculture it is painfully evident that if you don’t understand, we probably don’t want you to.
Our music is encrypted messaging. Passed on from us3r to us3r, who understand it on an intrinsic level. Not to say we don’t want to make music. We do, most of us with a fervor, on a daily basis. Still, the music itself shouts its core philosophy: In a world that seems so over processed, (one might even say autotuned) we strive to make life interesting. It is our alchemy to turn pop culture into esoterica.
What I find most amazing and unique about this Witch House generation is that, not since the Dadaists, has a movement encouraged such a vast amount of variety and experimentation. One of the biggest arguments from the outside is that no two artists sound the same. I think this is the greatest feat for any genre. Take, for example, hardcore punk rock in the early 1980s. Kids across the United States created a huge network of youth culture. Still, the scenes themselves wallowed in conformity. The bands involved were expected to make music a certain way. Artists that deviated from this (Flipper, Butthole Surfers, Minutemen, Nervous Gender…) suffered and were ultimately expatriated. Archivists have worked hard to create subgenres to explain this, but the fact remains Flipper WERE a hardcore band. Quite honestly, the four bands mentioned above seem MASSIVE in their influence when compared to groups such as Ill Repute, Jerry’s Kids and The Necros (all who adhered to the sped up Ramones rubric.)
The Witch House movement is about evolution, not decay. Everything it comes in contact with is sucked up and spat out through its gnashing, gnarled teeth. There really isn’t even time for digestion. The result is an amazingly confounding mess of near random sounds and imagery. The only thing that really ties it together is artifact. Most of us use low bitrate and resolution as our calling card. This is where Lil B fits in. His 96 kbps raps sound at home when placed next to our godless, hedonistic music. This is music created by a genration raised on Real Player and You Tube.
A culture of information overload.
- Nattymari
December 4th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Good post but using the columbine footage for the track? Kinda seems a bit obvious and MAYBE insensitive. I love dark, I don’t give a fuck shit as much as the next guy but…
December 4th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
aw man this is such a good piece!! Such a nice succinct write up of the genre!
December 5th, 2010 at 1:50 am
O’Doyle RULEZ!
December 5th, 2010 at 2:39 am
Baby C:
It’s my personal video and my personal decision to use the footage. Perhaps the most unobvious thing (in a witch house sense) was my decision to leave the video unaltered. That was done on purpose. The remix is of “Happy Children,” an italo classic by P Lion. If you google the lyrics (obscured by my mangling) it might make more sense.
I have to save a lot of my thoughts for part two but I will say:
a) I am a card carrying Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fan. We can debate that one privately (I’m easy to find.)
b) The simple fact that a kid can download a bootleg copy of Ableton, make a track and be accepted into a subculture may actually PREVENT a few future Columbines (it worked for G.G. Allin.)
c) You are really going to hate the tribute to John Jamelske I have planned with ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ (and I put it in print, so now you HAVE to do it ijĒŞǙŞ!)
Keep reading!
December 8th, 2010 at 1:16 am
Witch House is just the same as any other music genre. A few good bands and a lot of derivative bands that hide behind an aesthetic. I find it interesting that you claim Witch House inspires deviation from the mold, most WH I’ve heard does nothing to stand out from the other bands operating in the genre. I’ve yet to hear the Flipper of the Witch House “scene” and if it continues on this way I doubt we’ll ever get one.
December 9th, 2010 at 12:24 am
The result is an amazingly confounding mess…yeah that pretty much sums up 90% of the witch house stuff getting hyped. I continue following it cause it combines so many of the things that I am typically into– horror movies, occult imagery, a dark hip hop influenced sound, etc.. I have a feeling something worthwhile will eventually come out of it, but holy shit is a lot of it terrible. Ritualz is one of the recent WH things I’ve seen reviewed here that made me reconsider my dismissal of the sound. We all want it to be good, but can we be honest and acknowledge that it’s mostly bad?
December 9th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
@Armagreth:
again, I have to say keep reading because this is a running column. but I see a lot of deviation just within the scene. take the synth pop of FVNERALS, the freak folk of KING DUDE and the crazy trill wave of someone like FAMILY and try including them within the same genre anywhere else. Perhaps it is just a conceit that we all claim the same set – but then again the medium is the message in a Post McLuhan universe, innit?!?!
And Asian Women on the Telephone may be our Flipper… as they are now officially Witch House (because I said it here, so mote it be!)
January 2nd, 2011 at 8:16 pm
[...] either way, its a cool mix. i dont really feel like explaining what witch house is, so ill let this do it for [...]
March 6th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
everything i say is stupid. i like all. this scene has been around since the 60′s. seems to have just found its sound again. i know nothing.