A few more words on the definition of Witch House
- Witch house is an occult-themed dark electronic music microgenre and visual aesthetic that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s.[1] The music is heavily influenced by chopped and screwed hip-hop soundscapes, industrial and noise experimentation, and features use of synthesizers, drum machines, obscure samples, droning repetition and heavily altered, ethereal, indiscernible vocals.
Influences and style
Witch house applies techniques rooted in
chopped and screwed hip-hop—drastically slowed tempos with skipping,
stop-timed beats
[8]—from artists such as
DJ Screw,
[9] coupled with elements from other genres such as
ethereal wave,
noise,
drone, and
shoegaze.
[10][11][12][
text–source integrity?] Witch house is also influenced by 1980s
post-punk inspired bands including
Cocteau Twins,
The Cure,
Christian Death,
Dead Can Dance and
The Opposition,
[13] as well as being heavily influenced by certain
industrial and
experimental bands,
Psychic TV and
Coil.
[14][15] The use of hip-hop
drum machines,
noise atmospherics, creepy
samples,
[16] dark
synthpop-influenced lead melodies, dense
reverb, and heavily altered, distorted, and pitched down vocals are the primary attributes that characterize the genre's sound. The genre rose to prominence in the early 2010s with renewed interest in individually produced electronic music and internet subcultures- rising with the increasing tide of genres such as seapunk and vaporwave.
Witch-House music has been quoted as being provocative and transgressive in nature, "like pop music wafting out of Castle Dracula". The genre is characterized as oozy, dark, transgressive, and that which blends the line between abrasive and harmonic
[17][18]. As artist Nurgul Jones states
[19]
“ The easiest way I can find to describe witch house comes from this scene takes place at the start of the movie Blade (you know, the one with the vampires), where there are a bunch of vampires in a club amid humans. All of a sudden, in the midst of dancing, the movie slows down and blood starts spraying from the ceiling, much to the glee of the vamps and horror of the humans. Like a heavy, pulsating blood-beat. ”
Many artists in the genre have released slowed-down and
backmasked remixes of
pop and
hip-hop songs,
[9] or long mixes of different songs that have been slowed down significantly.
