Recently, DJ and underground music impresario Robert Disaro declared the death of slowed up music. Bold words, considering he himself has serious ties to Houston, a city where the legacy of DJ Screw is a lifestyle choice and not a trend.  To further the confusion, Disaro’s eponymous label was instrumental in breaking the dark drag of Witch House and the man just concluded a summer tour laden with more Gothic trappings than a Crow Convention. Perhaps the 2011 Upside Down Cross Deuces Tour was his fond farewell before embarking on his next journey, or maybe he just feels that as a pioneer of the sound he has the right to decide when it ends. Whatever the case, it is obvious that he didn’t hold a coven council meeting, because it seems like slowed up sounds aren’t really going anywhere.

One artist that didn’t get the memo is Denver based Strange Powers.  Earlier this year, Powers impressed many with the Mmmmmmmm EP he released on AMDISCS.  His new EP on Tundra Dubs, Genetisis actually turns up the Screw, by fusing Strange Powers’ pernicious synth with an ample amount of promethazine pitched  hip hop samples. Tracks like “After the Gold Rush” sweat an odd mixture of absinthe and codeine, as industrial sounds are assaulted by some of the most minimal  post-Screw that has ever been recorded. As I mentioned in my first article about Strange Powers, he is no stranger to the boom bip, and developed his sound making his bones on the underground hip hop scene.

Tennessee’s Party Trash is another artist that will never let the spirit of Robert Davis Jr. die. Although he dabbles in a wide range of music, from IDM to drone, his roots are always apparent. Last month, he and I released an EP as Thoed Myndez based almost entirely on loops and samples snatched from original gray tapes. Just about everything Party Trash touches has the indelible tattoo of Screw all over it. He also just released a crucial Halloween mixtape (a collaboration with fellow Tennesse producer fr<>ze,) featuring original beats and rhymes from a handful of their closest friends, including SortaHuman, Noah23 and Blam Lord.

So what’s the damn deal? Why all the fatalism in a goofy little internet music scene?  The answer lies in the artists themselves. Big ticket artists on the small scene have seemingly tired of their old sounds.  Replacing lo fi bit rates with a more polished version of sinister bass and a vibe borrowed from early 90’s rave and modern dubstep. It is true that this rebirth of cruel seems to be getting a little slicker this year. Additionally, too many factions within the insulated community seem to be clamoring to declare their own take on it as the heir apparent to the house that a few small batch CD-Rs built. As the music becomes more diverse and faceted, there are always new artists looking to repeat the triumphs (or tragedies) of earlier artists that released through seminal labels like Disaro. Whatever your class in RPG Funk: Rock on, Rave on or Sail on. It is diversification that leads to progress, this has always been the power of chaos and mutation.

There’s room on this Masada for all to jump.

This world of Witch House is a staggeringly confusing environment. Rather than graduate to full MMORPG status, it instead operates on a handful of servers, each one coexisting with a minimum of communication and communion. Log into Witch-House.com and you are bound to see an entirely different group of artists than you will find on one of the legion of Facebook Groups that actively promote the meme. There is some overlap in the venn diagram, but for the most part each server works independently, resulting in a fractured glass that may never gain legitimacy as a valid genre. As far as Facebook goes, ▲WI╪CHBØØK▲ has always been both important and controversial. It’s founder and moderator, a self-promoting figure who refers to himself as STILLBIRTH  or Logan Cale (a screen name pinched from the cancelled Fox series Dark Angel) is often criticized for both his iron handed rule of his group and his brash old school ideas when it comes to the marketing of an axiom that many feel he has no right to claim.

There really is no need to bore readers with the details. The in-world drama that exists within witch house is neither interesting, nor worthy of repeating.  Anyone who has attempted to explain last night’s raid to a non-gaming coworker has seen the dead “so what” stares that soon follow. ▲WI╪CHBØØK▲  itself, despite it’s eye-rolling name and seemingly populist aesthetic serves a great purpose within its little community. Most of the groups and forums associated with Witch House seem to be not much more than networking tools, places for fellow artists to meet and share ideas and tracks. Out of all of them, ▲WI╪CHBØØK▲ seems to harbor the most genuine fans. People that simply listen to the music and enjoy it for what it is. Rather than just focus on new music, it is also the place where people attempt to hash out a dark undercurrent that has always existed within popular media, and apply it to what is happening now.

STILLBIRTH will tell you his back story gladly.  Not much of it Googles, leaving many to doubt whether he exists as all. He hates being referred to as Logan Cale, although he refuses to reveal his real name. If you let him tell you, he is a product of the 1990’s metal and goth scene, where he spent his time playing in countless bands. Somewhere in the beginning of 2011, he decided to switch gears entirely and focus on Witch House. Even now, his musical project Stillbrith has yet to release more than a demo track and a cover of Devo’s “Mongoloid,” (co-credited to his teenage son’s project B4D W0LF). He has become a controversy in-game for his over the top persona and his slightly more than aggressive marketing philosophy. This participant has wondered whether he indeed realizes that Witch House has little to no mainstream potential (but perhaps one needs to tell that to Chino Moreno of the Deftones too.)  What makes Witch House special is it’s cheekiness and confusing nature. Without that, it may just be another collection of bedroom artists and armchair musicians.

This week sees the release of Logan’s baby, the compilation Covenfuck. With a title as audacious as its curator, the product itself is mind-blowing in its enormity.  STILLBIRTH spent an insane (read: very) amount of time reaching out to artists in order to assemble and collect tracks (the majority which are exclusive to this mix.)  Rather than handle the final mixdown himself, he handed the job over to Mike Textbeak, who has always been the unifying spirit of the movement. The prodigious result streams as three separate mixes and is available for download.  It features pretty much every big name ever involved with the game including Crossover, Mushy, The Present Moment, Λ (Arc), High Park, CRIM3S, Mascara, GuMMy†Be▲R!. Really the list is way to enormous to print. It also features and is dedicated to STILLBIRTH’s dear friend Antonio Urdiales (who passed away a few weeks ago.)

One may question the intentions of this figure named STILLBIRTH, but one will have a hard time questioning his dedication and enthusiasm for what we all do.  His true intentions often seem cloaked in a thick shroud of mystery, but his diligence and hard work has paid off. A gift to the community?, or a clever jump off for his new label Black Lodge Music? That question has yet to be answered.  He claims the mix is not about him, yet every promotion and poster proudly shouts his name in the role of Executive Producer. In all honesty, he has every right to be proud, he worked his ass off for the past few months organizing this thing.  Regardless of anyone’s opinions of the man, the fruits of his labors (and Mike’s) have provided listeners the most expansive primer to a sound that remains as disputatious as Mr. Logan Cale himself.

When I first wrote about ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ at the beginning of this year I knew very little about his personal life. I’m sure The first few times the Bloglin posted about his work they were even more in the dark. We all seemed to like it this way. ijĒŞǙŞ  and I eventually spoke for countless hours via Facebook comments, fueled by the bond of our appreciation of artists like Bob Flanagan and Henry Darger. Bob was an old friend of mine, and growing up in Chicago, iJesus’ mom told him tales of the Vivian Girls since he was a young child. I found out his name was Tony, and he was 25. He had been kicked out of Cooper Union in New York and that although he spent a lot of his life in Alabama, he always considered Chicago his home. He spoke of being a proud homosexual, as if using names like PonyBoy and F46907 weren’t enough of a clue. I became enamored, no addicted, to his Facebook page, a pastiche collection of hardcore gay imagery, random thoughts, YouTube postage and some of the best Unicode tagging in the game. If Witch House is indeed RPG Funk than Antonio is Level 85.

That first time I wrote about him I chose to keep him as mysterious as he wanted to be.  Since then he has “come out” to the public as a young artist named Antonio Urdiales. Throughout his internet life, his inworld persona has been so strong that people have doubted his actual existence. I myself often fantasized that somewhere in Illinois or Alabama there was a boiler room operation where a team of people sweat blood to bring this character to life.  Artistically and musically, Antonio’s output was both massive and far ahead of its time. His YouTube channel dates back to 2008 and features sound, typography and imagery that wouldn’t start to trend till almost a year later. It may not be entirely fair to say that he invented Witch House, but it is certain that he has been a huge influence since before Day 1.

So why don’t many people know who he is? Quite frankly, he has always wanted it that way. It seems odd; now that the Deftones have gone all uni on us, and many of the bigger acts associated with the genre are attempting to make something more than #legendary status out of their craft, but it’s true. Urdiales has always obscured his vision, by releasing under a variety of names (some unknown to anyone but him,) and glyphing his titleage with some of the most advanced and horrendous charmap terrorism. He has never released his work as an album or with any [even net] label. If one looks at what Antonio does, they can see the true heart of  this movement. It has always been about the solidarity of only the most obscure outsider artists. Think of it as a tribe of cyb3rg33k Juggalos if you will. This shit is double FUBU all the way.

So why am I writing all this? Recently Antonio has suffered a health setback. About a month ago he rushed back to Alabama and was immediately hospitalized. The doctors found a blood infection and immediately gave him a transfusion. They also discovered that he tested positive for the AIDS virus. This whole month has been touch and go, as Antonio and his doctors have been fighting for his life.

In the age of Catfish  and Real Life Second Life, it is easy to suspect that everything is just a meme. With Urdiales it is even easier, as he has skillfully crafted his internet persona to become part of his artistry. Sadly, this is not a joke. Antonio needs us and we need him.

Mike Textbeak quickly put together a little mix showcasing Antonio’s music as well as a handful of his favorite songs (this way you can still keep guessing where Urdiales ends and Witch House begins.) The family over at the Witchbook facegroup are also compiling an EP1C collection of just about everything he has ever done.  We hope to sell a few copies and donate the money to his loving mother, who has been by his side this whole time. You can also view a bunch of fam favorites over on their Tumblr.

And Antonio, if you get a chance to read this… this is a tribute, not a memorial.  Keep fighting, you still owe me a video!

Editors Note: Sadly this is now a memorial as Antonio has unfortunately passed away this morning while this was being written, edited and scheduled.

Mike Textbeak – iK0NiK a mix 4 ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ
1. Cindergarden – Something to Kill For (Nattymari Edit)
2. Drugs for Drunks – F.A.T.E.
3. Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook – Searching
4. Slowhead – Untitled
5. MARA5 – Water Blood Ashes Bones (∆AIMON RMX)
6. V‡S kULt – Small In Number But Greater In Mind
7. ___N___ – GHOSTNNN
8. Bruxa – Witchstep
9. Araabmuzik – Underground Stream
10. ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ – Luvu2day
11. Fostercare – Stray
12. Araabmuzik – Free Spirit
13. P0nyB0y – 1nternational
14. White Car – The Bridge
15. Hollagramz – Galactic Leash
16. Daytime Television – Untitled

The reason they put choking hazards on toys nowadays can be attached, almost singularly, to the existence of Polly Pocket. Manufactured by Bluebird Toys, an independent company based in England that would later be acquired by toy goliath, Mattel, Polly Pocket consisted of a shrunken-down, stereotypical, “valley girl” character (Polly) along with her miniature accessories and interchangeable outfits packed into a dreamscape that folds right up, into, what resembles, a makeup case. The tiny pieces within the outer shell, once misplaced, left the toy completely worthless causing parents to bear the brunt of a discontented or dead child, depending on if the pieces slipped through a crack in the sidewalk or down a throat becoming lodged in the air passage. Polly actually underwent a recall in 2006 for this very issue.

And now, a little something for the boys. Polly’s younger and more daring male counterpart Mighty Max, something, due to my gender, I’m way more knowledgeable about and keen on discussing, hit stores in 1992, also manufactured by Bluebird, playing off of the “eww” factor that young males so voraciously bought into. I was no exception to the rule and was set on snatching up all of these “spooky,” “scary,” compact toys, down to the last, highly-losable figurine. Mighty Max toys were pocket-sized worlds in the shape of snakes, skulls, and other creatures of the night, offering in the jaws of the beast, an environment and a chance to roleplay and plot interactions between hero and villain. Each plastic landscape had the coolest names too, so rad they made me wonder if someone’s job there was to come up with the titles of each individual snap-case.

The toys were categorized into Doom Zones and Horror Heads and, if my memory serves me, the only difference between them was the shape and look of the exterior carrier. My personal collection included Mighty Max Conquers the Temple of Venom, Mighty Max Escapes From Skull Dungeon, Mighty Max Challenges Lava Beast, Mighty Max Pulverizes Sea Squirm, and the list goes on and on. Now, when I say the pieces were small, I mean miniscule. I managed to lose the figurines within a matter of weeks and after going through a trunk of my old playthings a few months ago, I had only the cases left, a timeworn skeleton of my Mighty Max intrigue, with no movable pieces in sight.

A mint condition Mighty Max set, if any kid could keep one that way, is comprised of a Max figure along with two or three enemy figures. Once those are gone, all fun is lost forever. To promote the toys, a shitty cartoon was developed in the early ’90s about an entitled, blonde-haired brat who finds an enchanted baseball cap. Nobody really knows how he acquired the cap, I’ve heard theories about Max’s dad leaving it to him, Max breaking his mother’s statue and finding it inside, and Max discovering it in his mailbox, but, regardless the process, the hat allows him to timetravel, fight monsters, and embark on a quest to fell the perpetratin’ Skullmaster.

The damned things are on eBay as we speak, going for upwards of 200 smackers. If i’d have know I might not have……well no, I woulda still abused the shit out of them and misplaced everything.

Have you ever been on Yahoo! Answers? If you haven’t, please, don’t go. It genuinely may deplete your intelligence. I mean that. And it’s not an issue of there being a lack of answers, but rather, the nature of the questions being asked. They’re insanely stupid. It’s unbelievable! The problem goes far beyond stupidity, however, to a place of sheer inconsideration. It’s cruel the things that these Yahoo! users impose on other, general users of the Internet! I’m hesitant even to provide a few examples, but not that hesitant.

For starters, here’s one regarding party-appropriate apparel:

This question, requiring just a basic level of decisiveness and personality, is typical of the type you’ll find littered across Yahoo! Answers. It’s not too stupid of a question either, but it has no business being posed to the collective community that is the World Wide Web. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy; You really don’t have anyone else to whom you can ask this question? There’s not one single person in your life who could advise you in this area just as well, if not better, than some random person (pervert) on the Internet? I guess it’s actually pretty ignorant of me to assume that everyone in this world with access to Yahoo! also has access to human beings. Yeah, that’s messed up.

But another thing, you’re already online! You’re on the Internet! Just look up 1960s icons! It’s this type of simple, shockingly easy to answer question that plagues Yahoo! Answers.

Another type of question frequently asked by users is the type that, well, is impossible to answer. Here’s one asked by a culinary school student:

How can you do that? You can’t. How do you ride a bike without a bike? Or, perhaps an even more poignant question for Thanh to answer: How do you spend money without having any money?

From there we move to the type of question that, while there is a definite answer to be found, it should stay unknown. Here’s this one, about, well…holes:

Jesus. Please, nobody tell this guy the answer.

Those are, more or less, the three main types of questions you’re gonna find around Yahoo! Answers. Often times the questions will be some combination of two types, like a question that doesn’t really have an answer (other than an obvious “no”) but also could easily be asked to anybody other than a Yahoo! user.

Here we have some straight up idiocy:

No, Joe Jack, you won’t. Protein, despite what you heard, is not a drug. You will, however, fail an IQ Test.

And then there’s this:

As far as I know, this does not exist. Really the only thing to suggest here is that you find two people that are down to have you follow them around while they interact (no screenplay crap + based on a true story) and then watch them have sex. And I guess one of these people would have to be a mother. Something tells me that this guy and the neck hole guy would hit it off famously.

Continuing along the downward spiral of SAT scores (the only real way to judge a person’s intelligence):

Dude. What does it matter? What is this information being surveyed for?

When did it stop being a word? Never. Snuck is the past participle and informal past tense for “to sneak.”

Yup. No such thing.

I don’t know, what does this sentence say?

http://translate.google.com/

Is this 100% a matter of opinion? Yeah, it is.

Sexist? No, never. Correct? Always. All girls love it, dude! You got it!

Someone put this guy in touch with the neck hole dude and the realistic milf porn guy. That’s the dream team right there.

Spend less time on the Internet. Talk to real people. Do anything. ANYTHING! You wanna paint more? Fine! Just do it. Don’t ask Yahoo! users what they think you should do. They don’t know you!

Fortunately, Yahoo! Answers has hidden a disclaimer deep in the shadows of their website, claiming, “Yahoo! does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any questions, answers or other posted information on Yahoo! Answers” Accuracy? This certainly is not a matter of accuracy. In fact, the answers are all pretty accurately addressed (at least, as accurately as they could be by a bunch of idiots), but the questions at hand are just so ridiculously mind numbing – that’s really what Yahoo! needs to legally protect themselves against! Brain damage.

I keep going back to their website to look for a couple more questions for this post, and just end up widening my eyes and shaking my head. Forget what I said before, go check it out. Do it. You’ll be okay, I imagine, as long as you eventually leave the site and have a conversation with someone, or read a book.

There are honestly so many questions on Yahoo! Answers similar to, “If your life was a song, what would the title be?”, “Do you think the person you are thinking about right now is thinking about you too?”, and, “What comes to your mind when I say ‘stars’?” And maybe I’m in the minority when I say that I don’t care at all what someone I don’t know thinks of when they hear the word “stars,” but I doubt it. I can’t be! And I honestly hope that no one, other than my mother, cares what I think of when hearing the word “stars” either. The world cannot be that imbecilic. True, Yahoo! Answers has over 200 million users (and yes, I got that figure from a Yahoo! Answers question, ironically), but I just won’t give up on mankind like that! The questions are too stupid! Do I think the person I am thinking about right now is thinking about me too? Only if every Yahoo! Answers user is currently pondering just how little I think of them. Now that, I would like an answer to.

In the beginning there was Party Trash. According to Scripture, the Genesis of the true Witch House sound started promptly with those early Disaro releases.  In years to come, those ghettofied handwritten CD-R’s may be as collectible and coveted as DJ Screw’s Gray Maxells. Along with artists like ///▲▲▲\\\ (VOID) and White Ring, Joe Volmer’s work as Party Trash helped to solidify the most common sound to be found among thee Triangle Cult. His love of dark musical landscapes and Southern hip hop served as the drawing board for plenty of artists to come. So why is it that he seems to be putting some distance between him and the new spooky kids now?

Rather than go with Disaro, Party Trash chose to release his new LP Alone on Bandcamp. The choice had nothing to do with any Soap Operatics or financial situations. Instead, Volmer just felt the need to distance himself from the more obvious and base misconceptions surrounding Witch House. It was the right decision.  Stripped of pseudo gothery, Volmer’s new album more closely resembles early Warp than it does early Salem. Composed of short and slow sketches of sound, it is reminiscent of older Aphex Twin played at 16 RPM.

This seems to be a trend among the artists associated with Witch House in the early days. As a new crop of artists emerge, all with strict and stringent ideas about what Witch House is supposed to sound like; many other artists  seem to be pulling back from the fold.  The usual suspects keep on releasing the usual music on the usual net labels, but all the interesting sounds seem to come from the periphery.

Once you gaze into the looking glass, you find a virtual nanoscene, complete with a mainstream of its own. For a microgenre of music that can probably only boast at most 10,000 worldwide fans, it is  pretty intricate stuff.  As if grown from a petri-dish containing music industry DNA, the little Witch House sub-scene keeps growing at an enormous rate. My guess is that the encouragement for EVERYONE to participate helps the community to flourish. To this day, new names pop up in the social networks daily, some will get bored, as their tracks get passed over; but others will stay and grow, make connections and attempt to progress within the game’s unscripted environment.

I’ve taken to calling it RPG Funk, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s like WoW coupled with Soundcloud. The real magic lies in the fact that in order for the game to work, people have to create actual art to talk about. Due to this, there actually is some really tremendous work coming from what is, essentially, a fabrication. A fictitious genre of music made to fuel the strangest MMORPG on the internet today.

This is also what holds many of the artists back. It is hard to take a movement seriously, when the movement itself admits to the joke.  This is also where the divisions lie.  The fracture that exists  is not simply a difference in opinions, but the result of too many diverse influences stuffed into one very small room. Some of the artists involved seem happy to give the public what they want, carefully crafting a fictitious “sound” based upon the model of older Disaro, Mater Susperia Vison but almost totally devoid of any of the urban or hip hop influence that made the original sound so exciting. Another faction seems intent on fucking it up.  Artists like iJesus Khrist, Witchboy and Haruki Tamesue revel in the dichotomy of extreme reverence and almost utter obscurity. A third faction, consisting of artists like ▼▲▼Vagina Vangi and Unison are carefully trying to elevate the sound into something very closely resembling synthpop.

There is no real animosity, although there is a festering sense of territorial disputes. Those with dreams of turning the sound into the next dark chillwave have a constant fear that the iconoclasts will forever cast a shadow of chaos and disarray, making it almost impossible for the scene to progress into a mainstream movement. At the same time, the wreckers of sound find it almost offensive to actually consider opening the game up to the general public. In their eyes, the entire gameboard was created to keep away from the norms, who would ruin the fun with boring and pedestrian ideas. It really isn’t a matter of who is going to win, because the game is so open ended that there are many ways to reach the final boss battle.  In a lot of ways it is a weird mirror of late ‘80s and early ‘90s tagging crews, where rival crews judged their merits by either going all city or becoming the most notorious or hated (by hitting harder spots, being known as brawlers etc…)

But back to Party Trash. His self released album was so good it gained the attention of Clan Destine Records, perhaps the only label around dedicated to producing quality music regardless of genre-lisms. Clan Destine decided to release it as a limited edition cassette, proving Joe’s theory that he did not need to dwell on the past to prove himself today. Those of you tied to the digital world can pick up MP3s or FLACs for $5 via Bandcamp (check the player below).

He recently released a series of YouTube Synthesizers. The concept is simple, let them load and used the number keys to ‘play’ foreboding and dramatic witch house sounds (you will have to click and play from within the You Tube website, as the function keys don’t work on the embed.)  He assured me he made them simply for fun, but I personally see them as a commentary on the disposable sounds that threaten to destroy what was once a pure vessel of experimentation and creativity.

I†† – “Azoth”

We live in a world where symbols assault and affect us every moment of our lives. The essential documentary Helvetica explained how the most simple typeface on the planet can mold and shape us without us even noticing. For centuries, Esoteric Orders have made a science out of the power of sigils and their proper use in the Great Work. More recently, modern occvltists have obsessed over the power of the plethora of new images that have arisen in our commercialized society of popular culture.

There is no denying the power of a Red Octagon. It makes one stop, look both ways and proceed with caution. But what of Mickey Mouse ears? Aladdin Sane lightening bolts? The Nike check or the three Adidas bars? All of the symbols have a similar, if more clandestine effect on how we go about our lives on a day to day basis. It has only been less than two years, but the advent of Witch House has brought the concepts of Sigilism right back to the forefront. The use of occvlt imagery, both classical and cyb3r, has been one of the most stable aspects of this ever changing meme. Some shrug  it off as fad-ism or simple fashion, but the fact remains: with serious ties to organizations like TOPY and Thee Pendu Cvlt, it is quite obvious that some people know very well just what it is they are doing.

M△S▴C△RA – Shadow of Tonight

Our medium of expression is already flooded with symbolism, the goal is to redirect that symbolism.  The same way a tagger mean streaks over MTA signage in an attempt to go all city. It may be easy to mock the Triangle and the Cross and the unicode trappings that are often used to refute the legitimacy of Witch House, but one look at the new Lady Gaga video and it is evident that it is working. Perhaps for the first time, as earlier movements like the Church of Subgenius (well  they did have Devo) and even the Justified Ancients of MuMu (the KLF) never quite managed to crack the mainstream with their own personal mindfucked operations. Take a gander at Tyler’s performance on Jimmy Fallon and  it is clear that the Sigilism of Witch House has started to emboss itself into the fabric of popular culture.

The question remains: just what is it that is being accomplished?  What is this great work? What sort of Magick is afoot? Well the answer is not quite that simple. Let it be said that it is a form of Chaos Magic, perhaps a reclamation of culture. Our way of taking it all back. The inclusion of symbols associated with the gam3r and the haxxor make it perfectly clear just who is waging this war.  We are the Cyb3r G3ne3r4t10n, and WE set all the trends.  We do not take our cues from you anymore. And as the old fashioned captains of industry scratch their skulls and figure out how to make a profit all of this, we have already moved on.

This is an Adderall Nation and we bore very, very quickly.

This new year has seen a rash of music bloggers attempting to properly categorize Witch House. From the good, the dry, all the way to the silly. As always, the problem lies in the attempt to define it in reference to traditional journalistic benchmarks. This is in vain, for it is impossible to organize anarchy. The movement most often referred to as Witch House owes its roots more to the way the internet functions than any specific musical style. It is a movement based on trending, interaction and hyperlinking… it is not simply “Electroclash 2.0”

This new mythology suggests that the music started with Salem. Recent articles have stressed the importance of the Chicago group to the point of overstatement. While an integral early player, it’s a misnomer that the music of Salem is truly that important to the music being made today, just a few short years from their formation. Although many within the Witch House enjoy Salem, there was plenty of music floating around during the years of 2007-8 that helped shape the vague vision that exists today.  The main issue that I have is that this all reeks of good PR and lazy journalism and without refutation, the myth of Salem as the sole mothers of invention will be etched into history, which is always scripted by the victors.

Slowed up music has always been rooted in pitch experimentation. Whereas most slowed music tends to pitch things down anywhere between 25-50% there have always been DJs who have experimented with much slower tempos. Although it still seems exotic to some people, Screw’s music has existed for well over twenty years now so there isn’t any mystery to it’s influence, it’s simply evolution. Most don’t feel the need to mention Kraftwerk in each and every single article/review of electronic and dance music do they? That influence is a given at this point and mostly strays far from explaining the greater picture.

For Example, Memphis’ DJ Black deserves a great deal of credit for creating mixes at especially crawling tempos, which have become an integral part to the Witch House arsenal.  A fixture in the South and Midwest, slowed music has never really been quarantined to hip hop.  Flea Market DJs have been “Screwing” everything from rock music to pr0n ever since Robert Davis started selling tapes out of Apt. 100. Big name groups like Swishahouse and Beltway 8 have been doing it since the late 1990s.  Add this to the dark imagery associated with the Memphis hip hop scene, and the inherent sadness and melancholy involved in most Texas music, and the evolution to Witch House seems rather organic.

Ask Tennessee artist $LØW HE▲D, who credits the Chattanooga music scene as his main inspiration to make music (need link). $LØW HE▲D, who formerly recorded under names like Game Syndicate and Horrid Veil has been experimenting with slow music for over a decade. He also credits Kansas City art fags Ssion with helping to pioneer the current sound, yet they too usually stand on the outside looking in on articles defining the evolution of “Witch House.” With a new split cassette coming out with RΛINИIΛЯ he stresses the idea of community: “We all should be working together more often, it’s a really good time to be involved with music.”

Disaro Records and Disaro artist Party Trash can both trace their roots straight to Houston, Texas, the (oft disputed) birthplace of Screw Music. Growing up in Houston, codeine slurred beats are a fixture, and hardly even something someone in their twenties would notice. Its just everyday life.

But the magic really happened when this small group of Americans came in contact with an equally experimental group of Europeans. Something sadly, and conspicuously absent from almost all attempts by the mainstream press to define the origins of Witch House. Around 2009 music blogs caught wind of the sound and vision of conceptual artists AIDS-3D and Mater Suspiria Vision.

(more…)

Space Slave Trade

Marshall McLuhan’s theories on media and its importance to modernism and culture have been more than prophetic in the past 50 years.  The Fullerian concept of  exponential growth, the realization of the Global Village via the interweb… sometimes it is difficult to discern whether this pop philosophy foresaw the future or actually dictated it.  Graphic designer Quentin Fiore was the visual representation for the new message. His fusion of single source black and white image and bold simple typeface seemed out of place in the dayglow era of psychedelic excess.  Critics of the time said that his work had a stiff textbook feel, not realizing the impact it would have on the same future that McLuhan championed in his rhetoric.

From the photocopy zines of the punk movement to the medical photography and bondage footage of Re/Search and Amok, stark representation has always been the vogue of the true counterculture. The kids in thee Coven are no exception as every Kult needs a strong graphic identity.  It makes sense, really, the aesthetics of Witch House are pooled from the DNA of punk rock, industrial and early rave/IDM culture. More importantly, the children ov Witch House were weaned on Internet imagery. Click and Save photos and messy, overzealous Myspace layouts have inspired the copy/paste terrorism that fills the pages of today’s blogs.

Image from Worthless Waste Tumblr

The Tumblr blogs offer expression for everyone, without the need of heavy photoshopping skills or a design background.  In this new Cargo Cult, just about any image is considered fair use. Religious icons share space with VHS screen shots and the latest celebrity scandal.  Without any captions or explanation the result is reverse Rorschach. It is up to the observer to transform this data back into the muddy ink blots that so closely resemble thee musical output of the collective.

At times tracks and mixes are embedded, but more often than not, these blogs only provide photo documentation. Although there are thousands, sites like Worthless Waste and ØƑƑ†Π∑ṂÔV∏†∆Î∏ are great places to start the journey, as they not only offer amazing content of their own, but also healthy blogrolls that will provide hours, if not days of stimulation.

Space Slave Trade

One of the more audacious examples of this new art movement is Space Slave Trade. With in-your-face audacity, this website attacks with a barrage of pornography. Hard Hentai, medical oddities and ultraviolent visuals assault viewers with a transgressive display devoid of  rhyme or reason.  Play, is the operative word, though; for despite all of its depravity, there remains childishly lighthearted intent. We’re not dealing with sociopaths here, just some blank generation playing a depraved game of show and tell.

When engaged in the art of more complex creation, Space Slave Trade’s Seychelle Allah channels the old ghosts of Robt. Williams through the vessel of todays MMORPG gam3r.  Although he denies any affiliation with Witch House, his imagery weaves itself fully into the matrix. Unlike Disaro house artist Owl Eyes, whose art is an expression of his occult leanings, the art of Space Slave Trade is pure pop trash. For this reason, it is a perfect visual representation for the new Witch House, which has been steady shifting from its dark imagery in favor of a more direct commentary on pop culture trending.

Facebook has also been a wealth of Witch House pages ever since the jaded minions made their exodus from the ruins of Myspace,    Perhaps the most intriguing of all of these pages is the personal page for ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ.  Ijesus, who has recorded music under aliases like P0/\/YBOY and ______________/\/_____ (with Ian Heil,) has turned his personal page into possibly the most important fanzine of our Cybercvlt. Operating somewhere between a tumblr and 4chan forums, ijĒŞǙŞ’ page follows its own logic. Using the medium of status update, this post-human pariah draws his followers right into the core our pagan mentality. Partly a showcase of  media he enjoys, his page blitzes the senses with a serious dose of aesthetic anarchy.  It’s about the juxtaposition of media.  Olsen Twins videos right next to hardcore bondage fetish next to a picture of River Phoenix’s corpse…If anyone is the spirit of the scene it is this kid. There are times that I think everyone I am talking to is him.  In his own way he sets the tone for everything.  There truly are no rules in his twisted Thelemic world.  On a personal level,  ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢt remains an enigmatic sleeper cell in our psyche. It is impossible to completely figure out just who he is, and he is aware of this fact. He revels in it actually. He is our Manson Mirror.

Confusion is a key weapon in Witch House artillery.  This is Fluxus in practice.  It is very rare that one ever sees an advertisement on any of these blogs.  It is obvious that something is being promoted, it is just unclear what exactly it is.  This particular breed of Chaos Magick is what drives us, and is ultimately indicative of our lawless nature.

Head after the break for a small gallery of images from across the worlds Space Slave Trade, Worthless Waste, ØƑƑ†Π∑ṂÔV∏†∆Î∏ and ijĒŞǙŞ ҚĦŖİŞŢ that weave together a picture of this visual covenant.

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Information is the new religion, and pop culture is its symbolism. Cloaking Jay Z in the guise of Illuminati high priest may seem like tabloid paranoia, but in actuality is the truth. The Coven of middle aged and old men that run the entertainment industry are in complete control of what we see, hear and like. Casting Warhola in the role of prophet, they flood our media with images and sounds that are factory made and almost identical. With this in mind, it is no mystery as to why the current crop of iconoclasts have chosen these icons to oclast. Witch House bends and distorts what we see every day to its own tastes, both in a statement of rebellion and simply because it sounds good to our ears.

It is our declaration that we will not fit into the default avatars created by the Big Media Republic. What is even more exciting though, is that the aesthetic also wages war against the evil hand of Alt Control. For too many years, hipsters have been forced under submission to listen to marble mouthed “underground” rappers and jangly twee pop. This generation is not afraid to accept, even revel in the excesses of the mainstream.

There is no doubt in my mind that the best hip hop single of the year is Far East Movement’s “Like a G6.” With its insane bottom and proto industrial rhythm, the song burns into the psyche, causing flashing light seizures as the narcotic takes effect.  With a few pitch and effect tricks, the song becomes pure unabashed pornography.  Then there is the love for the new crop of anti-divas: Gaga, Rhianna, Ke$ha… even Katy B. Off tune and off time, these women belt out musical contraband, with lyrics that could make Grace Jones and Marc Almond blush til they were blue. At times, it is almost like they are making music exclusively for us to sodomize.

Our philosophy is simple. We are not you. We do not ever want to be you. We live in your world, so we accept your gods; but we shall personalize and pervert them, like a Voudienne does her Catholic saints.