In one of the year's most pathetic moments of music writing, the genre "witch-house" was coined. I've already ranted enough about how stupid the whole debacle was, although it did give us the not so well thought-out term "rape gaze," which made it worth while for all the wrong reasons. Salem was the band at the center of it all. When they weren't being asked by music journalists what they thought of the absurd descriptors being attached to them, they were making some mighty fine experimental dance pop. "Redlights" was an inspired piece of cathedral-sized ambient dance that mixed classic 4AD atmospherics with amped up electronics and a beat that stumbled as much as it gently pulsated, like liquored up dubstep. With "Redlights" Salem proved that it was the music that mattered and set them apart, not whatever half-assed critic-invented genre that unimaginative writers were clamoring to pigeonhole them as.
So, I'm going to try something new here; every Monday (or in this case Tuesday) I'm going to post something related to indie music and culture that isn't a record review. Instead of doing the whole "Throwback Mondays," which I'm just not feeling to be honest, I'd like to be open to post whatever strikes me that particular week, whether it be a "Throwback" column, a spotlight on some new video, song, group, whatever, or a commentary on music, culture and trends. I had prepared a rather lengthy essay concerning the use of the term "hipster" for my inaugural article, but after spending my creative juices Blogger did me a solid and decided not to save but a portion of my work. I was hoping to reconstruct that essay for this week, but then yours truly got nasty sick and I can't write for shit when I am sick, so instead I'm going to wuss out with this little spotlight on a few "witch house" artists that won't require a lot of writing that wouldn't be that good anyway.
So, "witch house." I have already gone on record condemning the use of this term as a pigeonhole for a genre, but over the past couple of weeks I have had more than a couple of people ask me what the hell "witch house" is, so rather than quibble about the use of that term and whether or not it's a real genre, I going to simply acquiesce to the use of this term for this column if only to demonstrate what people are talking about when they are talking about "witch house," as well as the fact that I am under the weather and not up for the fight. I will say that for my two cents "witch house" seems to be a blanket term used to describe artists who, in varying degree, combine Burial-like dubstep with darkwave electronics and can, at times, sound like the Crystal Castles. Again, not sure this is a genre other than a mutation of darkwave itself, but whatever. I will say that I have been digging hard on these bands a lot lately, but I dig hard on Burial and Crystal Castles and darkwave, so that isn't a surprise. Basically if you dig on any of those musical permutations, you will likely dig hard on these bands, who may or may not be exemplars of a new musical sub-genre with a really stupid name.
First up, the infamous Salem. They are currently at the head of the "witch house" pack, but for my money they are not nearly as dark as the name implies, and their addition of obnoxious chopped and screwed rap into the mix does nothing for me. Regardless they are the band of the moment, so check 'em out. This is an earlier single from the band, and the video is slightly NSFW in a serial killer murders and strips his victim sort of way.
oOoOO is probably the next most well known. The one man San Fran act whose proper name is Christopher Dexter Greenspan has enjoyed a couple of well received eps, so anticipation for a full length is bound to be high. At times his sound is a bit more indebted to dubstep and minimalist techno than any of the other artists and tends to focus as much on rhythms and beats as atmospherics.
oOoOO - "No Summer 4U"
Balam Acab is also a one-man project, this time of Alec Koone a student in upstate New York. His Myspace page rightly proclaims "There is no witch in this house." Koone makes beautiful and dreamy electronic music that sounds like chillwave slowed down to a crawl and played in the dead of the night. His "See Birds" ep is a must have and one that absolutely defies categorization, making it that much unfortunate that he gets put into the "witch house" box.
And finally White Ring. White Ring are my personal favorite of the bunch. The duo may be the only band that lives up to what I envision "witch house" would sound like if it weren't the creation of a music critic. The band is much heavier and darker than their peers, and not nearly as narcoleptic. There is a pulsating electro-punk heart at the center of White Ring's music that makes their sound more immediate than others. With only a single and an ep under their belt, the world needs a White Ring full length stat.
The advent of Salem as a "buzzband" is less a story about a band, and more of a commentary on the relentlessness and restlessness of music bloggers. Anyone who has ever read an interview, or viewed a live performance realize that Salem really don't give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks about their music - they are making it for themselves and themselves alone, and if you want to come along for the ride, or the "drag," then so be it, but don't expect them to tailor anything toward your trend-hopping ass. They didn't set out to create a genre, they didn't set out to make for a movement, but that is just what they did, through no fault of their own. How this happened has nothing to do with the band's intentions and everything to do with the frenzy by which bloggers attack anything new and slightly original. The band combines various forms of electronic music, dance and hip-hop to come up with something that resembles a rave on ambien. It is original? Kind of - in that no one else really sounds like this, but a close listen will reveal every single element derivative of something else. Be it goth or crunk, it's in there and apparent. The fact that the band combined all of these elements under one roof and made it sound, for the most part, pretty damn good had bloggers scrambling to digest, categorize and name this new, somewhat different sound, thereby creating a pigeonhole where one did not exist before.
A cursory review of attempts to capture and contain Salem's music reveal such reviled terms as "witch-house" "haunted-house" "drag" (my favorite because it is derived from a maligned and misunderstood quote from an interview with member Jack Donoghue, showing how desperate some were to categorize this music) and finally the infamous "rape gaze" (another favorite because following the fall-out that accompanied the overeager use of this term by Pitchfork in their review of "King Night" they quickly retracted it, thankfully Hipster Runoff has decided to not let them forget it). All of these descriptors bespeak of a ravenous music press vying for a shot at becoming the next Simon Reynolds (who infamously coined the term "post-rock" in his review of Bark Psychosis' "Hex" album, thus helping to shape and define a new kind of sound) by coming up with a name that in essence forces the creation of a whole new musical genre, regardless of whether or not that genre actually exists outside of the context of that name. So Salem is "witch house" "haunted house" "drag" and/or "rape gaze" all because some music writer somewhere wanted to be the first to bag and tag a sound that sort of kind of sounds different from anything else, but ultimately not really.
Once the genre was named, the descriptors started flying; "scary" "terrifying" "dark" "bleak." If you didn't know better, you would think Salem were a doom or black metal band, not a dance-oriented electro act that really isn't any of those things. And what do Salem think about all this rush for judgment, this baseless hyperbole, this embarrassingly overwrought analysis? They could clearly give a fuck care less. Like I said, they just want to make music they like, and if you like it; fine, but you don't really have to. It's really no big deal to them either way. They didn't create this beast, we did with our incessant need to hype, consume and categorize. Once you get past the idea of Salem as a "buzzband" and the baseless stupid attempts to create a genre out of their sound, Salem are actually not half bad. I kind of like what these guys and girl are doing for themselves.
Semi-born out of a sordid history of drug abuse and prostitution, the Chicago/Michigan trio create a dense electronic sound that is sometimes gritty and sometimes beautiful, and often a mixture of both. Take the album's title track; it sounds like a dirty slowed down UK garage single but is quickly elevated by bubbling synths and a tweaked choral rendering of "O Holy Night." It's massive and absurd and cool all at the same time. "Asia" follows and sounds even larger, with gently soaring distorted synths and ethereal vocals over quasi-military drums mixed with a simple industrial beat. It's even more absurd, maybe even outright stupid, and yet if you let it, it will move you. This dichotomy of high and low art is what makes Salem work. Throughout the band's debut they seamlessly mix the sublime with the grime, crafting layers upon layers of sound to make for their own unique take on electronic dance, and even though each element has been done somewhere by someone else before, it hasn't been mashed together into a cloth sack like this before.
Occasionally Salem slips into affectation as on "Sick" "Trapdoor" and "Tair," a smattering of 'chopped and screwed' hip-hop tracks that quickly wear out their welcome. Each song interrupts the album's momentum to some degree and detract from what, at times, is a pretty powerful release overall. The band is better suited toward the cathedral-sized ambient dance of "Redlights" and the goth-driven coldwave of "Hound" and "Killer" than they are DJ Screw. But whatever, they seem to have an affection for it, and this isn't music for me, it's music for them. I just can't remain on their codeine-inflected hip-hop hayride for too long. It's the point where I have to fast forward to the next bliss-inducing track full of sheets of synthesizers and angelic vocals.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that regardless of what has been written about Salem, their music isn't the least bit scary, so don't believe that hype. If you want scary contact me and I'll set you up with scary. If this is "witch-house" then we must be talking about Glenda the Good Witch and not witches at black masses.
Will "King Knight" sound good in two years? I don't know. I think it will. Ultimately, I don't really care, nor do Salem probably. Right now, though, this is sounding pretty damn cool and comforting, and it is ripe with harbingers of the band's potential. They could go in many directions from here both mundane and amazing. This isn't to say that they haven't already created some great music, because they have, it is just to say that unlike most bands, Salem sounds like they could be something extraordinarily special and important, or drop off the map after a year.
