Witch House: The Ghostly Genre of The Music Industry
If house music, nu-rave, and ‘rainbow rock’ birthed a little evil twin brother who started it’s career as serial killer by killing the family pet and was the black sheep of the family that would be witch house.
Witch house music is one of the most forgotten, but yet relevant micro genres in the world possibly the entire galaxy. The genre itself was not able to hold it’s own weight and make a breakthrough in the overcrowded music industry, but yet still has a influence in today’s music. Why and how is that even possible? The story behind this genre is very compelling and challenges everyone in music to really rethink what they may or may not understand about music and the artists themselves. There is a reason why a genre like this was even conjured in the first place. The reason will make you question everything.
Witch house emerged from the underground electronic music scene in Denver, Colorado in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s where DIY artists and producers started to gain popularity. The most notable producer and artist of this genre who is also known for coining the genre’s name is Travis “Pictureplane” Egedy who moved to Denver and became interested in experimental and noise music while attending college at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and was apart of a Hip Hop group called Thinking In Circles.
Pictureplane moved into a DIY artist’s space called Rhinoceropolis in 2006 where he created his music and began to make a name for himself in the Denver music scene and attract a following of his unique sound. In 2009, during a interview with Pitchfork magazine he was asked to describe the type of music he made and used the term “witch house” which unknown to Pitchfork magazine was just a joke made between his friends about house music and from there is the birth of witch house music genre. From there the sound and aesthetic of witch house music exploded social media platforms such as Myspace and Tumblr being one the biggest platforms where this genre was virtually being talked about gained popularity by many fans and DIY artists. It from there birthed hundreds of new witch house bands such as Crim3s, Purity Ring, Gvcci Hvcci and the genres most recognized faces such as oOoOO(pronounced “Oh”), Crystal Castles, White Ring, Salem, and Holy Other.
Witch house music sound started to be talked about among music journalists who worked for The Guardian and New York Times and was being echoed and whispered about it in the mainstream music industry when different rave parties at warehouses across the globe started to play this type of music and witch house musicians started to play at popular music festivals such as Lollapalozza, Austin City Limits, and Glastonbury.
The sound of Witch House was born out of DIY artists who rebelled against the natural rules of the music industry and experimented with sounds to almost challenge the way music was usually made. Artists and producers who now lived in a era where they had access to a recording studio through a computer or phone with Garageband, Fruity Loops, Reason, or early versions of Logic and ProTools without the time limit and expensive cost of a traditional recording studio really had creative control to make music however their hearts desired. Witch House instrumental orientation included synthesizer, drum machine, sampler, and sequencer. The sound is described as freedom, magical, menacing, dark, and beautiful with little to no lyrics heard in the songs or a very unrecognizable voice being played in the background of the song. It’s sound style originates from chopped and screwed which was popularized by Houston’s finest DJ Screw and genre influences such as drone, ethereal wave, industrial, noise, shoegaze, and a little trap.
Even though the genre clearly had a following and was gaining global popularity it was still met with a lot of criticism and heavy hesitation to embrace the emerging genre. Most people completely didn’t take it serious and treated it like a joke and it didn’t help that how the genre’s name was even coined as a running joke among friends to describe the type of music they were making. This really hurt the careers of a lot of serious Witch House artists and bands who also was not taken very serious as well. The hesitations of the genre came from the heavy-occult themes and images this genre makes which includes witchcraft, satanism, shamanism, violence, horror, and terror. A lot of the images that included in this genre is taken from supernatural tv shows such as Charmed and images of different celebrities. Pictureplane tried to explained to skeptical critics that most artists who make music like this are not really into occult things themselves and they were just artists who were having fun with their music. Of course it was still popular among the goth subculture especially when Michigan witch house band Salem arrived on the scene. Unfortunately for Salem they did not truly get to shine in this genre because out of nowhere fickle, small attention span fans moved on to a new wave of music called Seapunk and Witch house was officially history — atleast that’s what everyone thought.
Somewhere around 2012 witch house mainstream appeal was pretty much nonexistent and it can be blamed by many different factors such as the music itself does not translate well in live performance. Most witch house artists on stage look like a bunch of amateurs performing for open mic night. Another reason is it was easy to cause copyright infringement because of the lack of restraints and boundaries within the music genre for example, a lot of witch house artists were putting three crosses as symbols on their albums or used as symbols in their stage name, but calling themselves different stage names such as one band with three crosses was names Crosses and another band with three crosses in their name called themselves Ritualzzz it was way too confusing to tell the difference between bands.
However, this genre’s influence was survived through mainstream artists such Kayne West on his Yeezus album, Katy Perry’s smash hit “Dark Horse”, A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, Charlie XCX, Danny Brown and a lot of hip hop artists have heavy witch house influences in their music.
In today’s music the most relevant and notable artist who’s clearly influenced by witch house music is none other than Billie Eilish herself. Her occult themed music and images is the biggest show of witch house that anyone has ever seen and honestly she is pioneer of this genre since the mainstream industry has very much embraced her. She also has been met with some criticism of her dark themed music and has justified it with the same response as all witch house artists in the past has done, but why hasn’t she embraced it herself? Instead of running from it and making light of it she should embrace it for what it is because she unknowingly brought witch house music back to life and gave it such a huge success, but yet won’t give this genre the credit it deserves. She prefers to describe her sound as “dark pop” which is skimming the surface of witch house music and playing it safe because of the kind of judgments that come with the genre; however, it is her personal choice to not claim it, but her or no other artists can never get away from the fact that this genre really did build their careers and brought new life to their sound.
Over a decade later since the death of Witch House music this decade still haunts our existence even if we are aware of it or not. You may hear witch house music in songs as sound effects or background music, but it is definitely still just as relevant in popular music as it was ten years ago. So next time you listen to artists that was mentioned in this article or someone else pay closer attention and open your ears a little more you may hear traces of this ghostly genre. This is a genre that can’t be seen, but only felt and refused to be forgotten.
Arts&Culture Reporter, 2015, Explore Alternate Realities With Pictureplane, The Columbia Chronicle, https://columbiachronicle.com/7714364c-900c-11e5-9e67-17f7efc83355,Copyright 2020.
Gfycat, https://gfycat.com/discover/witch-house-gifs, Copyright 2020.
Horner, Al, 2019, Whatever Happened To Witch House?, Red Bull,https://www.redbull.com/us-en/whatever-happened-to-witch-house, Copyright 2020.
Shattered Glass, October 12th, 2016, Crystal Castles- Crimewave Live, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGYoxn4TbIE&ab_channel=ShatteredGlass, Copyright 2020.
SwimmingThroughDrones, August 12th, 2011, Witch House Mix, Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/search?q=witch%20house%20mix&query_urn=soundcloud%3Asearch-autocomplete%3A6aa1664b9f4147a9ada68e382c4905f5, Copyright 2020.
Witch House Music, 2019, Witch House Music Mix 2019, MixCloud, https://www.mixcloud.com/WitchHouseMusic/witch-house-music-mix-2019-dark-and-indie-downtempo-gothic-chillwave-post-industrial/, Copyright 2020.
ZendosT’s Artwork, December 30th, 2018, Steam Community, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1607856137, Copyright Valve Corporation.
