Witch House

About

Witch House is a electronic musical genre and visual aesthethic, influenced by chopped and screwed hip-hop soundscapes, and industrial and noise experimentation, and features use of synthesizers, drum machines, obscure samples, droning repetition and heavily altered, ethereal, indiscernible vocals. The visuals of the genre usually include occult, witchcraft and shamanism, with a significant use of Unicode symbols in order to keep the scene underground and make harder to search on the Internet. The genre gained a following in early 2010’s, often being described as a “joke genre” on communities like /mu/.

History

The term witch house was coined by the electronic musician Travis Edgey, better known by his stage name Pictureplane, as a joke to refer to his own music.^[5] Shortly after being mentioned on the music review site Pitchfork, the term started being used on mussic press. The genre didn’t gain traction until late 2010, when the American band Salem released their album King Night on September 28th, 2010. Other notable groups include White Ring, Purity Ring and oOoOO. ^[6]

Reception

On December 15th, 2010, a subreddit dedicated to witch house’s discussion was created, gaining over 2,900 subscribers in less than five years.^[1] In October 2012, the music blog /mu/essentials^[4], run by members of 4chan’s music board, posted a graphic for “Essential Witch House” (shown bellow).

On October 16th, 2014, YouTuber FrankJavCee uploaded a video titled “HOW TO MAKEWITCHHOUSE”, where he explains the history of witch house and how to recreate its aesthethic and sound. The video gained over 85,000 views in less than 10 months.

Witch house was most popular on communities like 4chan’s music board /mu/ during late 2010 and 2011, but its popularity has since decreased.^[2] Witch house can be found in other communities and on other websites including Tumblr^[3] and Soundcloud.^[7]