The ever great Better Than Sex blog just did a post about where next for Witch House and why people who shove some random symbols together and slow down someone elses track isn't creative and it isnt even really remixing. And yeah its true, the best bands of the genre are better than that and make very original and creative pieces of music great songs and great remixs. Remember re-using other peoples work isn't un-creative or stealing, great artists since the Renaissance have used other artists work as their own. In music it's happened in a direct form since the birth of hip hop and any one who wants to go toe to toe with that can just go hang with 50Cents twitter and get ripped the **** apart. Its collage, its sampling, remixing has evolved over the last few years to be a kind of open sauce way of getting your music heard over a wider genre base, its okay to drag chop and screw tracks, I mean lots of those drag remixes are good "because" they are funny, its like why Grindcore is good or Breakcore etc. A sense of humour is important in every aspect of life.
People seem to worry and buy into genres then sell them on when things seem to change or they get scared. Just don't worry, all these "witch house" bands that are one lonely dude in his bedroom jumping on the band wagon and making poor quality tunes with a triangle added have always been attached to genres, its always happened, like since the '60s! The great bands of this genre are going to still keep going, be noticed and make great stuff for everyone to hear. The Disaro label is doing showcase tours all through the rest of this year and lots of these bands will emerge or fall to the wayside when the live experience happens. We will see Mater Suspiria Vision, oOoOO, Fostercare, White Ring, and all the others who can really bring it when it needs must show everyone how it is done and other people outside of our little Witch House fan club will start totake up the rains.
And we have to be ok with that, we also have to be ok with people not liking a lot of these bands because when all is said and done a lot of Witch House falls under the wider genre of Noise and Drone.. and you know a lot of people don't like or get those genres! If someone like the amazing Ben Frost suddenly put a triangle in his name and changed all his artwork to include inverted crosses and smoke filled graveyards then I bet you a years supply of National Geographic magazines that tons of scene kids would be buying or downloading his stuff and pretending to like it. People who love a scene always create something to become part of it, I mean hey why else are we all blogging about it, I'm not getting paid are you? White Ring or Balam Acab or Salem cant help but inspire imitators just as Crystal Castles cant help being a very big influence on Witch House.
Witch House runs all the way from the wastelands and valleys of Noise all the way to the streets of Hip Hop, the clubs of Industrial Dance Music and the after parties of tripping out psychedelic Prog! Its broad and so will change and grow and diverge and falter.
Like all genres, the real trick is not to worry and enjoy the ride, if you got in early and are following the entire Witch House river then just let it take you, enjoy the drag remixes until they become boring or you don't laugh any more, take pleasure in listening to some kids dark and lo-fi noise tape he's emailed you, it doesn't mean that to like it will somehow be endorsing it and putting it on a level with Animal Collective or Health, no its just what it is, some fun along the way. The great bands of any genre emerge and diverge from their original nest, its a genre that was born on the internet so its going to act like a dance genre with many little contributors making only one or two EPs, doing remixes or mixtapes then going on to work in PR or run a label or have kids, let them be.
Now the real trick, the real under lying magic to all this is a harder and a more obscure thing to find, its in every Witch House band and not entirely in any one of them, its in pictures and symbols but they are only describing with images what can not be drawn, its in the music, the sounds and the wave forms but it alone is not IT.. next time you walk down the street just look about you and you will start to see its the ▲.. its on signs and trees and houses and in menus and in history books. Its in school books and on tv, its in windows and in childrens toys.. Witch House is spreading, damn its out of the computer now its in the actual real world, you think that you have always known the ▲ symbol that its always been there..? Well you're wrong it has only existed since January of this year and by December 20th, 2012 it will be the only thing you can see.
I must go now ▲ is coming I must look busy, ▲!!
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