Witch house (genre)

Characteristics

Witch house is characterized by the use of hip-hop drum machines, noise atmospherics, creepy samples, dark synthpop-influenced lead melodies, dense reverb, and heavily altered, distorted, and sometimes pitched down vocals, which are either rapped or sung. Influences range from electronic-based genres like ambient house and synth-pop, to alternative music genres such as shoegaze, industrial, ethereal wave, and gothic rock. Other influences include noise and drone. Alongside, the Houston hip hop scene, particularly rapper and producer DJ Screw, whose pioneering sampling technique known as "chopped and screwed" is regarded as a foundational influence. Witch house’s sonic and aesthetic features are often grisly, nihilistic, and dystopic in nature.

Witch house's visual aesthetic draws influence from occultism, witchcraft, shamanism, horror-inspired artworks, collages and photographs, as well as the use of hidden messages. Artist Nurgul Jones, notes:

Artworks by witch house visual artists have incorporated imagery from horror films such as The Blair Witch Project, the television series Twin Peaks, and the fantasy show Charmed, as well as mainstream pop culture celebrities of the 2000s. Common typographic elements in titles, such as by Salem and White Ring, include triangles, crosses and Unicode symbols, which are considered gatekeeping mechanisms, in an effort to keep the scene underground and harder to search for online.

History and etymology

2000s–2010s: Origins

In the late 2000s, witch house's stylistic sound and aesthetic was pioneered by Salem, who formed in 2006, in Traverse City, Michigan. The term "witch house" was later coined in 2009 as a joke by Travis Egedy, professionally known as Pictureplane, as Egedy explained:

Shortly after its mention in Pitchfork, other mainstream music blogs, press and sites began to use the term. Furthermore, Flavorwire stated that despite Egedy's rejection of the label, "the genre does exist now, for better or worse". By the early 2010s, the genre rose to prominence online through association with early internet aesthetic-related microgenres such as chillwave, seapunk and vaporwave, as well as online subcultures that spawned on sites like Tumblr, Bandcamp and SoundCloud.

Rape gaze Additionally, "rape gaze" which was coined by Brooklyn-based duo Creep was briefly associated with the genre, labelled on the band's Myspace page and used in the New York Press. However, after being featured in a Pitchfork article in 2010, the term quickly drew heavy backlash and controversy, with editors rewording the article and Creep later issuing a statement disavowing the label, "we would never want to advocate sexual violence against any human being. It was a play on words which we never expected to be used as an actual genre."

Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), an occultism and chaos magick-derived spiritual group (and its accompanying music collective Psychic TV) led by musician Genesis P-Orridge, has been referenced as a predecessor to the emergence of witch house, which can be seen through their shared aesthetic derivations, musical practices, and propensities for the exchange of occult-affiliated practices and ideas.

Notably, some have identified “witch house” as a music collective embedded within the Internet (i.e. on music hobbyist websites such as Soundcloud or Last.FM) with shared aesthetic inspirations and an active interest in exchanging art. Emphasis is placed on the witch-house community as an information network in which knowledge, culture, and media centered on witch house's common aesthetic derivations (i.e. occultism, horror, etc.) are diffused and spread.

Decline and legacy

By the early to mid-2010s, witch house began to fall out of prominence online. In 2013, New York-based electronic duo Creep, originally associated with the scene, commented on the genre's status in an interview with Vice, stating, "we're glad witch house is dead." In 2021, Pitchfork cited Salem's unconventional live performances as a contributing factor to the decline of the movement. Subsequently, Mike Lesuer of Flood magazine wrote retrospectively in 2023, claiming that of the many "subgenres that define the early-’10s, many of them can only be stumbled upon in 2023 by finding a Tumblr account that hasn’t seen activity since the height of seapunk—which, like witch house, likely faded from memory because no one could think of a cooler name for it".

In 2013, Kanye West recruited Jack Donoghue of Salem to work on his album Yeezus, with his production particularly inspiring the song "Black Skinhead".

Additionally, underground hip-hop artists such as Black Kray, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, and Sematary have cited witch house as an influence. Mainstream artists such as A$AP Rocky, PartyNextDoor and The Weeknd have also released material inspired by the genre. In 2024, Pitchfork featured witch house on their list, "25 Microgenres That (Briefly) Defined the Last 25 Years," claiming it as a progenitor of darker themes being explored in online rap music.

References

References

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