Witch house is a microgenre of electronic music characterized by dark

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

themes and visual aesthetics that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The style is heavily influenced by chopped and screwed hip hop, as well as

industrial music Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music" that was "initiall ...

, ethereal wave and dream pop. Witch house incorporates synths, drum machines, obscure samples, droning repetition, and vocals that are heavily altered, ethereal, and/or indiscernible. The witch house visual aesthetic includes

, witchcraft,

shamanism Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a Spirit world (Spiritualism), spirit world through Altered state of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, such as tranc ...

terror Terror(s) or The Terror may refer to: Politics * Reign of Terror, commonly known as The Terror, a period of violence (1793–1794) after the onset of the French Revolution * Terror (politics), a policy of political repression and violence Emoti ...

and

horror Horror may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Genres *Horror fiction, a genre of fiction ** Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction **Korean horror, Korean horror fiction * Horror film, a film genre *Horror comics, comic books focusing o ...

-inspired artworks, collages and photographs as well as significant use of hidden messages and typographic elements such as Unicode symbols. Artworks by witch house visual artists have incorporated imagery from horror films such as '' The Blair Witch Project'', the television series '' Twin Peaks'', horror-inspired

dark web The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on ''darknets'': overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communi ...

videos and mainstream

pop culture Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * Pop (Gas al ...

celebrities of the 2000s. Common typographic elements in titles, such as by

Salem Salem may refer to: Places Canada Ontario * Bruce County ** Salem, Arran–Elderslie, Ontario, in the municipality of Arran–Elderslie ** Salem, South Bruce, Ontario, in the municipality of South Bruce * Salem, Dufferin County, Ontario, part ...

and White Ring, include triangles, crosses and Unicode symbols, which are seen by some as a method of keeping the scene underground and harder to search for on the Internet, as well as references to the television series ''Twin Peaks'' and ''

Charmed ''Charmed'' is an American fantasy drama television series created by Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling and his production company Spelling Television, with Brad Kern serving as showrunner. The series was originally broadcast ...

''.

Influences and style

Despite the name of the genre, witch house does not bear many similarities to the dance music genre known as

house music House is a music genre characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by Disc jockey, DJs and music producers from Chicago metropolitan area, Chicago' ...

, which features a strong up-tempo beat. Instead, witch house adapted techniques rooted in chopped and screwed hip-hop, specifically drastically slowed tempos with skipping, stop-timed beats—from artists such as DJ Screw, coupled with elements from other genres such as ethereal wave, noise, drone, cloud rap and

shoegaze Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volu ...

. Many artists in the genre have released slowed down and backmasked

remix A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...

es of

pop Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' (G ...

and hip hop songs, or long mixes of different songs that have been slowed down significantly. Witch house is also influenced by 1980s ethereal wave bands such as

Cocteau Twins Cocteau Twins was a Scottish rock band active from 1979 to 1997. They were formed in Grangemouth by Robin Guthrie (guitars, drum machine) and Will Heggie (bass), adding Elizabeth Fraser (vocals) in 1981 and replacing Heggie with multi-instrum ...

, as well as being heavily influenced by certain industrial and experimental bands, such as Psychic TV and Coil. The use of hip-hop drum machines, noise atmospherics, creepy samples, dark

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s a ...

-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.

Origins and etymology

The term ''witch house'' was coined in 2009 by Travis Egedy, professionally known as Pictureplane. The term was originally conceived as a joke, as Egedy explained: "Myself and my friend Shams... were joking about the sort of house music we make,

alling it Alling () is a municipality in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, Bavaria, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, ...

witch house because it’s, like, occult-based house music. ...I did this best-of-the-year thing with Pitchfork about witch house.... I was saying that we were witch house bands, and 2010 was going to be the year of witch house.... It took off from there. ...But, at the time, when I said witch house, it didn’t even really exist..." Shortly after being mentioned to '' Pitchfork'', blogs and other mainstream music press began to use the term. '' Flavorwire'' said that despite Egedy's insistence, "the genre does exist now, for better or worse". Some music journalists, along with some members of musical acts identified as being in the genre's current movement, consider witch house to be a false label for a microgenre, constructed by certain publications in the music press (including '' The Guardian'', ''Pitchfork'' and various music blogs). The genre was also briefly connected to the term ''rape gaze'', the serious use of which was publicly denounced by its coiners, who never expected it to be used as an actual genre term, but viewed it as simply a joke intended to mock the music press' propensity towards the creation of microgenres.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Witch House (Music Genre) Electronic music genres Fusion music genres Industrial music Experimental music genres Dark music genres Microgenres 2000s neologisms 2010s in music Indie music 2000s in music