Witch House

If you ask a variety of people how witch house started, you would get a variety of answers. Music producer Pictureplane claims that he was the first person to use the phrase “witch house” – in 2010 he tweeted, “I invented witch house yo” – but he is somewhat periphery. The concept of witch house is often disputed; some people latch onto the phrase, and want to take claim over it, or use it to market the sound, or to feel part of an emerging subculture – for example, Pictureplane wrote a blog post called “13 rules to make a great witch house song” – while others shy away from the label, instead calling the music drag, or rape gaze, or refusing to associate a title at all. The “rules” have an ironic edge, and there are references to drugs (“take MDMA and go to a strip club”), free sexuality, individualism, and an array of bands, thinkers, and rituals (“keep onyx with you on all time, keep citrine in the the space where you create, travel with moonstone”).

The “re-blog” appeal of this post is an example of how the witch house meme generally spread, and the Pitchfork review of Michigan based band SALEM's album, King Night, brought the witch house genre closer to the mainstream. This review also tied the label “witch house” to a particular sound: “Low end squelchy darkwave bass synths, processed beatbox beats on a syrupy loop, slowed down and manipulated voice samples and vocals, a dash of dissonant ambient noise, a pinch of shoegaze,” according to the blog Reykjavik Sex Farm!. The 2010 release of SALEM’s debut was a pivotal moment in the short history of the genre, as this album brought the sound to a much wider audience, and therefore had a considerable influence over the popular perceptions of what the witch house sound is.

King Night album art

You can’t say it started in one particular place because it came from the blogosphere, although some might say that SALEM is responsible for witch house’s notability. Once their first record was reviewed on Pitchfork, many would agree that witch house became credited and legitimized, and that it became more than just an abstract feeling spread throughout the never-ending landscape of the Internet. However, in an interview we conducted with the band’s lead singer, Jack Donoghue, he said

I'm not really sure what ‘witch-house’ is or who is involved in it. I think all three of us [the members of SALEM], in terms of working, are so focused on each other, that how people respond to it is somewhat external and separate. Terms to describe what we were doing started being thrown around by writers, and then other artists who were inspired by our work. 

Although there were legitimate sources such as Pitchfork and Wire, the majority of “writers” that Donoghue refers to include any person that has a blog or an opinion. The fact is that in the witch house subculture, the audience has a huge influence. Because the scene is so underground, the blogosphere retains more subcultural capital than the notable review sites, and therefore they have a great deal of influence. In an Internet-driven subculture, even the artists themselves are "online personas" making up this scene, and are constructed in what Rene Lysloff calls "a new kind of performativity, an actualization of multiple and perhaps idealized selves through text and image." [1]

Ultimately the music was bubbling beneath the surface for a while before it adapted any labels or entered a wider realm of recognizability. Thus, it is hard to pinpoint where the genre started, or a physical place from which it emerged; before witch house entered the Pitchfork consciousness it existed as a feeling on the Internet. The sound no doubt took influence from chopped and screwed hip-hop coming out of the south, namely Houston, Texas. Artists like DJ Screw and Lil’ Wyte slowed down hip-hop tracks and injected them with a codeine induced haze. Fans of chopped and screwed hip-hop adapted their own kind of language and way of writing that they felt matched the style of music. For example, one commenter on a fan video of Lil’ Wyte’s “Oxycontin” writes “this got me leavel but dam im lil to hi to reliz wuts goin on around me fuck man dis shit trippy thumbs up if you ona trip nd jamin to dis.” Even the imagery of random car burnouts filmed with a distorted filter in the fan video for this song evokes the atmosphere of the music. Witch house takes these concepts one-step further. Every subculture has some component of slang or vernacular with which it signifies, but because Witch house exists so much on the Internet, it revolves around manipulation of text and symbols, thus heightening the signifyin’ aspect of language.

†‡† album art. Visuals are an important aspect of witch house

In an interview with Simon Hayes, the director of SALEM’s music video for “King Night,” he said, 

[witch house] is definitely influenced by chopped and screwed. It’s almost like a stuttered, slowed down approach to rap and electronic music. The sound is created by extracting a beat or a little sample of a vocal track, an abstract clip of a sound, and cutting it up and making it into a larger beat. 

When the already established sound of chopped and screwed got mixed with shoegaze and sluggish electronic genres the music we now know as Witch house was conceived. Much like the fan video for “Oxycontin,” Hayes’ music video is a reflection of the feeling that Witch house attempts to capture – a certain kind of ethereal, cultish obscurity. One commenter writes below Hayes’ video, “Really interesting imagery here. Never thought one could add such melodrama and power to a video about a truck. The vehicle in question definitely has some malevolent supernatural force behind it.” Another goes on, “Great great video, evokes such an interesting and disorienting mood.” And then another writes, “The truck driving through the leaves is so powerful! Matches the music 1:1.”

The genre, originally conceived of as a half-joke, and considered a pretentious fad by the uninitiated, took on a life of its own on music forums, networks like Last.Fm (where X, X, X are tagged as “witch house”), and Youtube comment sections where people were free to give their own interpretation of witch house. In an attempt to make the genre more legitimate, some fans make connections between witch house and figures such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, the No Wave art movement, and Hakim Bey’s essay “immediatism,” to give witch house intellectual and artistic antecedents. We would argue that the genre's connection to Youtube, or more generally, Internet culture, is also part of the reason why pagan symbols, tri-forces, crosses and slashes are a signature of witch house. Names like ///▲▲▲\\\ and †‡† turn up zero results on Google searches, and this type of naming seems to be a response to pop status and celebrity in music, or is possibly another reference to Internet culture, and “hacker” forums like 4chan's /b/, where the tri-force is a popular meme. This naming style is so closely linked with witch house that even SALEM is often spelled S4LEM.

Since witch house culture is largely determined by fans, who are the ones who make forum threads and upload songs onto Youtube with fan-made videos, the terms of the genre itself are up for debate. This is why the term “drag” is basically synonymous with witch house, ostensibly attempting at a more serious-sounding name for the genre. In our experience with witch house fans, the two terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same bands and the same sound. Pictureplane, in another blog post, downplays the influence of chopped and screwed, naming Psychic TV as the "true innovators of witch house." The tension between mainstream and underground and between “drag” and “witch house” are examples of how this genre often exists in a limbo. The audience and the musicians are unsure what the meaning of the genre is or if they want to propel or dispel it. Donoghue of SALEM later said in our interview, “IDK about the symbols, I'm not that into it.”

Even though witch house can come across, through its music and its practice, as a somewhat elusive, ethereal subculture riddled by anonymity, elements of class and gender are present. You don’t need money to make witch house. All the production can be handled by one laptop, and software that people share freely through torrents. You don’t need the polish of a studio or a record deal to be a prominent artist in the scene. As Donoghue says, 

all we did was put our music on a MySpace page. The rest came to us. If it wasn't for the Internet SALEM would have stayed a private creation between us three. Since then we have gotten a publicist, and started to promote our work, but in the beginning we mostly put it up for our close friends and then other people responded. 

Furthermore, downloading the songs is not held in contempt as it is in most other music genres. It’s not as if all witch house music is available for free, but, for the most part, this genre is listened to and downloaded on the Internet, and many witch house artists sell tracks on sites like Bandcamp. While the witch house labels such as Disaro did consolidate artists and market the genre, they did not have a real intention to focus the music around record sales. There is therefore not much of a capitalist aspect shaping the culture of witch house.

All the unique facets of the subculture can be traced back to the Internet. Witch house is an amalgamation of many subcultures before it, resulting in a new kind of subculture – one that is originally digital, contested and created by its audience, and elusive in nature.


[1] Lysloff, René T. A. 2003. "Musical Life in Softcity: An Internet Ethnography." In Music and Technoculture, eds. René T. A. Lysloff and Leslie C. Gay, Jr. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.


Word count: 1663

Witch House Field Notes #2 - Virtual

Here is a selection of videos that are necessary to watch in order to get a more in-depth feel for the witch house sound and aesthetic, which is formed through the cultural references and symbols that are used, the video footage that is paired with the music, and the Youtube comments that respond to the aesthetic and add references to related music and pop culture. These videos are chosen for having interesting commentaries in their comments sections, so the comments are an important part of understanding this internet music subculture.

Salem - Sick: (lyrics in comments)

 

Some artists who adopt the witch house sound are willing to associate their music with the "witch house" label, but others, like Gvcci Hvcci who commented on their Soundcloud page to a fan who said "i love you gvcci hvcci, but damn why are all your songs under 2 minutes! this is witch house remember?¿" by responding, "This isn't witch house it's hip hop you fag. I can rap however the fuck I want." Often artists who willingly associate themselves with the genre also use symbols such as crosses or triangles in their videos, their song titles or their internet presence.

Gvcci Hvcci - Superlow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudYhyx5UIA

Witch House | †‡† (RRRITUALZZZ) - Psychic Teens:

PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS - I will always love you 

(Notice the reference to Twin Peaks in the band's name)

WU LYF (might be an interesting translocal connection):

Horse McGyver - Teen Meme Anti-Dream

http://vimeo.com/15151636

Sleep ∞ Over - Outer limits (maybe interesting comments)

A major influence on the witch house scene is Southern rap, especially chopped/screwed, which was popularized in Houston by DJ Screw, the Swishahouse label and others in the late 1990s. There is a noticeable amount of drug references in the slowed-down lyrics, and it is no secret that use of pills and painkillers such as codeine (in "purple drank") were a part of this subculture of Southern rap.

Lil White - oxycotton

DJ screw mix of SPM - high so high

LAST.FM groups/tags for Witch house

http://www.last.fm/tag/disaro

http://www.last.fm/group/WITCH+HOUSE

http://www.last.fm/tag/witch%2520house?ac=witch%20house

a selection of Salem remixes:

Salem remix of Gucci Mane

another Salem remix, of Charli XCX

Salem remix, Lil B slangin yayo 

"All Black: Jungle" Response

Jungle, which came out of the rave scene when DJs began experimenting with "black sounds" in the late 80s, is a diasporic music that mostly borrows from Jamaican music. This type of dance music often incorporates reggae vocals, vocals similar to rapping, or samples from films or other found material, on top of jungle's distinguishing sound which is an exaggerated use of bass. The music is definitely produced and consumed mainly by urban youth (one junglist puts it simply, "Jungle is about making music that adults hate and kids love"), but while jungle redefines notions of "Britishness" and British culture from a black perspective, the music scene itself is not so racially divided. From the film it is clear that jungle is a genre that black and white urban youths make and listen to together. However, one interviewee defined the rise of jungle as "a coming of age for black Britain," and the music definitely involves consciousness of multiple identities (i.e. diasporic identity) for many of its participants.


As such, the development of jungle is "fuelled by the creative tension between tradition and improvisation" (Les Back), and the result is a sound that some DJs close to the genre consider distinctly underground. Authenticity is highly valued in this genre at the time the film was made, and the jungle records of the early 90s were mainly released on independent minor labels. In a time and place (Britain) where blacks deal with racism and poverty, does jungle serve to redefine "black Britain" and the place and history of blacks in Britain? Is the backlash against jungle's mainstream success an attempt to preserve the integrity of this diasporic sound, or is this simply jealousy of mainstream success (as one of the interviewees says in the film)?

Simon Hayes Interview

Transcription of interview with Simon Hayes on 11-7-11
Questions are asked by Gus Wenner and Jason Steinbach
=================================
Q: What attracts to witch house as a genre?
A: Well I really love that sort of Swishahouse style of rap to begin with, and I have always loved DJ Screw, and then I met the guys from Salem, and became good friends with them, and became totally infatuated with their album and thought it was amazing.
Q: So it was their first album that got you into the actual "witch house" scene.
A: Yeah. And after I really started getting into Salem, I got into other witch house bands.
Q: So how did you find the other bands? Was it just by going online, or through meeting other people through Salem?
A: Well, I got into Salem through meeting Jack, who is the singer in Salem. I bought their album after meeting him, and after I liked their album so much I started listening to other bands in the genre. Specifically, the guy whose name is "little O big O" with five O's.
Q: I think it’s just pronounced “Oh.” So it was the Internet? That was how you found out about the other bands?
A: Yeah, just reading about it, and then I asked Salem who they liked the most out of all the other people, and they recommended "little O big O"
Q: So as far as the witch house scene, do you see any elements of the audience that stand out?
A: It seems like it's a very internet-centric fan base. Because it's so new, I feel like so much of their audience is like, you read about it on the Internet, it's blogs – a much younger generation.
Q: Do you see the music or the attitudes of the bands as a response to Internet culture or the blogosphere?
A: Yes and no. Just based on personal interactions with Salem, they’re all about the internet, YouTube, Twitter, appropriating things on the internet, that's how they make a lot of their music videos, these found clips on Youtube, and theyre whole aesthetic is based around the internet...trolling the internet, weird video clips of fights and burnouts and gangs and strip clubs and video games like Call of Duty, that's very much their aesthetic.
Q: The whole thing with naming your band after symbols and unpronounceable names seems to be tied in with the whole, kind of ironic response to the Internet.
A: Yes, I would say so. I would say there's a huge connection between the Internet and the aesthetic of these bands, it's not so much a response, it's an aesthetic. Like, bands in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix, their aesthetic was counterculture, Woodstock, free love, Monterrey Pop Festival, headbands, peace signs. Witch house is the Internet. Not exclusively, but that's a huge part of it.
Q: So we already talked about DJ Screw a bit... what do you think are the main influences in terms of other genres/styles?
A: I think it's definitely the chopped and screwed thing...the stuttering of those slow beats, slowed down versions of pop songs and rap songs, remixing songs. It's almost like a (?) approach to rap and electronic music. Like extracting a beat or a little sample of a vocal track, an abstract clip of a sound or beat, and cutting it up and making it into a larger beat.
Q: Witch house is really influenced by chopped and screwed, and chopped and screwed has obvious strong references to drugs in almost all of its songs, so I am wondering how much you think that drug culture carried over into witch house?
A: It’s not the same. There is no drug equivalent of Codeine in witch house. There’s definitely no identifiable drug in witch house. But I think it is case by case. Kids will be kids – everybody takes drugs.
Q: But do you think that witch house is influenced by drugs more so than other genres? I hear in the music such a lagged, stoned aesthetic, whether its codeine, heroin or what have you.
A: That’s a good point. That type of music is conducive to drugs, like shoegaze. It’s a very drugged out style. The people that listen to it and make it are more likely on drugs than the people that listen to top 40 radio.
Q: We’re interested in hearing about what you think the significance of the symbols, the upside down crosses and triangles are.
A: It’s a unified aesthetic with everyone in witch house. I’m not sure if it has to do with the Internet or text messaging…I don’t really know where it comes from, but it is definitely a common denominator with all of those bands. When I am texting Jack from Salem the symbols are in his text messages.
Q: What do you think Salem has that made them such an icon of witch house?
A: I think they have an incredible album. They made the best witch house album. All the pieces fit perfectly. With every genre there’s always a pinnacle that happens, and I think stylistically, the way they dress, their back-story, the record that they made, they are that. They did the best job to articulate witch house, both in terms of their personality and style and their record.
Q: Jason and I were talking about the role of irony in witch house. For example, John [from Salem] has a money sign tattooed on his face. Also, since it is such an internet-centric genre, and the Internet is very critical, analytical and ironic…how do you see irony playing out in witch house?
A: That’s a very good question. I think that there is an element of irony to it but the music is very serious. Jack from Salem is a very ironic individual.
Q: What is the aesthetic attitude of the audience?
A: There is a little slice of everybody in the audience. It’s definitely an aesthetically conscious crowd, a hip crowd. You definitely feel like your walking into a cool place when you go to a witch house concert. The audience draws heavily from gay/ghetto/Goth, as well as hipster. The thing about witch house is that it is hard to identify; it is a little slippery. There is an element of mystery to all of these guys. They are all hard to get in touch with, elusive, mysterious. John from Salem has a cell phone from 1998 – I don’t know if that’s ironic or not…

Rock-upy* Providence

I first heard about Occustock in an email that was sent out to a group of my friends a week or so before the event. Intrigued by what seemed to be a portmanteau of Occupy Wall Street and Woodstock, I followed a link to the Facebook event page, which gave a tentative list of acts but no schedule. It was obvious from the fan page that the concert was planned last minute and on a tight budget, but the quality of the musical acts was decidedly of less importance than the resourcefulness of the organizers in setting up the event against difficulties, since Occustock is embedded in a broader social movement that is not just about music. With cultural images of “protest music” having been fed to me by pop culture my whole life, but with no real-world experience of it, I was interested to see what lay at the intersection of protest and music in Providence in 2011.

Occustock was planned as a three-day event, organized as an impromptu free music festival by the local Occupy Providence group. The second night of the “masquerade music festival” was scheduled for Saturday evening (10-29-11) at India Point Park, but rain and snow moved the concert indoors to the Whiskey Republic, a bar just off of College Hill. Curious to see what kinds of political and cultural messages would come through -- if any -- at this event, which promised not just local musicians and acts from Boston and New York, but also “speakers and workshops” according to a Providence Phoenix article written about Occustock a few days before the festival, I went to observe. The same article also recognized the difficulties of setting up an ambitious show like Occustock in such a short amount of time  -- the organizers claiming to have conceived of the idea for the event only a week earlier -- while relying on the good will of local businesses and Occupy sympathizers for resources. As a result, the show on Saturday had a definite “feel of the improvised, the thrown-together,” especially in the small turnout that ended up making it to the snow location. On the other hand, this also created a more intimate setting, which I feel was conducive to the exercise of building solidarity between Occupiers and sympathizers alike.

While the concert was free, the organizers were enthusiastically offering Halloween masks in exchange for donations to keep Occupy Providence going through the winter. Occustock was in fact supposed to be masquerade themed, although few people besides some of the organizers were actually wearing masks on Saturday night. However, the concept of “masked mirth” (as the Phoenix put it) is fitting with the cultural messages that are being attributed to the Occupy movement lately. In our contemporary society, anonymity and equality are closely connected, both in practical life and in the cultural myths we share with each other. We see the connection between anonymity and free society in the comic book and film V for Vendetta, and a real-life example of this connection is the adoption of the same mask (based on the likeness of Guy Fawkes) for the purpose of anonymous protesting, most notably by the hacker group Anonymous in anti-Scientology protests in 2008. In their contemporary social context, masks are aligned with several of the ideals that are common across the Occupy movement. On a practical level, they protect one’s First Amendment rights, especially during peaceful protest; the mask also symbolizes the decentralization of a mass movement which gains strength through solidarity and numbers, not through leaders or individual identities. In the context of Occustock, the masquerade theme also emphasizes the inclusivity of the “Occupy subculture.” All that is needed to join the movement is geniune interest, such that even anonymous individuals would be welcomed. As one of the organizers, a 27-year old local hip-hop musician originally from Seattle, says of Goldman Sachs bankers, “They're welcome to throw on a mask and a costume and come dance with us.” The invitation to wear masks to Occustock is also a call for public participation in the creation of a unique social event, which is intended not to be in the realm of passive consumer culture, but to be, instead, a social participatory experience.

Neither specific political messages about the widening economic divide, nor “99% vs. 1%” rhetoric, already repeated and re-posted ad infinitum on and off the internet, were brought up in this Saturday evening of Occustock. The mood was not one of anger or resentment, but of simple musical empowerment and the self-aware creation of a peaceful community space. The opening act of the evening was two Indian men playing classical Indian music on the sitar and a hand drum. The musicians commented on the spiritual quality of the music, and talked briefly about the role music has played in Indian politics after being prompted by one of the organizers. The speaker for the evening, a Brown professor specializing in Indian history, followed right after this performance. I had seen her speak before at a “teach-in” that was held on campus, and she gave a brief and less academic version of the short speech she had made there, to the Occustock crowd. After making parallels to Gandhi and his committed nonviolence, she emphasized the importance of creating new mythologies for this movement to explain to itself how the country reached such a level of inequality.

An astute observer could recognize that the myth-making process she described was already under way at Occustock. For instance, the resourcefulness of the movement was brought up throughout the evening, and the diverse ideologies of the Occupy movement were reduced to their simplest elements, almost to the point of juvenile emotional appeals. After the professor’s poetic words, one of the organizers spoke about Occupy as simply “an excuse for all of us to be nicer to each other,” again elevating the power of collective good will and collaboration without verging into political rhetoric. He suggested that people in the audience should take this time to look around them, meet new people, include others into their discussions, and see what thoughts others might have to share. Another Occupy organizer at the event spoke to the movement’s reliance on donations from small businesses and the kindness of people who sympathize with “the 99 percent,” emphasizing the collective bargaining power and representation that “Occupy” confers to someone who is organizing an event. Through this narrative, new economic strategies can be vocalized, as it is well known that people are increasingly realizing the illegitimacy of the current (especially economic) systems in place. In the same vein, the organizers supplied the audience with free beer and appetizers, giving the credit to the manager of the bar, and making sure everyone knew there was free food and drink available. This attitude subverts the prevailing consumption culture, and imagines resourcefulness as the alternative social paradigm. The rest of the show consisted of Providence-based Last Good Tooth, then a series of solo and duo guitar and singing acts. The performers were overwhelmingly young white males in their 20s, and the audience was predominantly Brown students. They played songs mostly in the rock, folk and punk genres, and none of them brought up anything political while they played, focusing instead on the music. At one point the singer for Last Good Tooth sarcastically remarked on the excessive number of televisions that were on in that corner of the bar, more than he had ever seen in his life. Through such subtle gestures, the mood of the evening stayed at odds with the status quo of consumerist culture, and by extension passive TV-watching culture. Interestingly, the concert setting opened up a different level of discourse than the protest atmosphere, a level that never appeals to politics directly. It articulates certain discourses on equality, compassion, resourcefulness and anonymity that are common across the movement, but on a level that is more appropriate for the social setting created by a musical event.

This type of concert, reminiscent of an eclectic music festival but also with the feel of an open mic, is very effective in extending the efforts that are going on in streets, public squares and parks around the country. It allows a different form of social engagement to take place, between the creation-consumption of culture and the act of protest. It consciously rejects the bland consumerism that is usually so ingrained in the creation-consumption of culture. Bringing people together for the purpose of enjoying music, and claiming association with the mythical 99 percent allows Occustock to prove that rules, permits and restrictions are weaker than the will of the collective, either in planning a last-minute series of outdoor concerts or occupying a public space. This re-imagining and mythologizing of collective agency in the public space is always an important part of sustaining and spreading a movement, and significantly one can observe a self-conscious process of hashing out new myths and narratives at music events like Occustock, suggesting that “protest music” still has some social efficacy despite having somewhat changed its form since the days of Woodstock.

* credit for “Rock-upy” goes to the Occustock Facebook fan page
Word Count: 1518

Critical Review - Andes 10-17

The Andes essay brought up some interesting points regarding authenticity in the punk community, and how punks of different ages and class distinctions each construct the punk identity differently. "Poseurs" come in several possible variations: those who dress "punk" but don't know the unspoken rules of hardcore shows (for example, if someone falls down while moshing and you don't help them up, you betray your neophyte status in the subculture); those who just wear the clothes because their trendy but don't embody punk values; and those who dress punk and listen to the music just to piss their parents off. What separates the authentic punks from the poseurs is the internalization of the punk ethic, or the adoption of the punk "state of mind." Of course, a precise definition of this state of mind would be impossible to agree upon within the subculture, but what is important is that a state of mind cannot be mass-produced or sold in stores. If punk authenticity is judged by commitment to an ethic, how do incorporation, commercialization and "trendiness" function within this scene?

Andes highlights a quotation by one self-proclaimed punk who claimed others were not really punks because they did not have Doc Martens -- ironically, this reliance on commercial status for subcultural identity is exactly the "middle class bullshit" that punk opposes. Since the punk ethic cannot be reproduced and sold, the commercial incorporation of punk cannot be an authentic spreading of the subculture. However, it could create "poseurs" who could potentially gain the subcultural capital of "punk rock gods." After all, the poseur-punk binary is not very concete; specifically, as Andes says, a person can change between these two identities over time, and often genuine punks started out being viewed as poseurs. The gender and age divides are clear in this subculture, and since it is seen by many as a working-class culture, and suburban teenage punks might be seen as "just pissing off their parents" even if they are actually committed to punk values. 

Critical Review on Salvato, 10/13

Salvato focuses on controllability, especially control of the body, as indicative as professionalism. As an example, he looks at Britney Spears experiencing a "descent from professional to amateur" around 2007, and how in order to "control the amateur body" she is absent from the cover art, and her voice is drowned in electronics on her next album, and how this is ironically labeled a "brilliant" album by the mainstream media. In this context, he says, the term professional "signifies slick, glossy, untroubled, and untroubling" (76). Here he equates the mainstream use of "professional" to refer to a type of dispassionate, neutral behavior. Chris Crocker can never be seen as a sincere figure, part of the "manufacture of sincerity" because he is deemed an unstable body, whose excesses of crying, emotion, bodily movements, and other behaviors allow him to be marginalized as an amateur. 


I found it interesting that in Salvato's view, the idea of professionalism is linked to a restoration of confidence in the American social order. The narrow view of professionalism disenfranchises voices that might go against the grain of the dominant social order. However, counter to this narrowness is the potential for democratization via the internet and technology, and the dichotomies of professionalism will inevitably be challenged. Why is it important that society's amateur/professional dichotomy, as interpreted by Salvato, is centered on the body and body control, and what/whose agenda is this dichotomy serving? 

Witch House Field Notes

I am approaching these fieldnotes from a combination of virtual and live research methodologies. The live component brought me to AS220 last night for a show that included Dream Boat, a local band that was billed as "monolithic Witch House sounds." I later found out, in talking to them after the show, that they did not actually associate themselves with the microgenre of witch house, and that the description on the AS220 website was actually the words of someone at their label, amdiscs. While their live set sounded hugely influenced by Salem, White Ring, oOoOO (basically, most of the music coming out of the Disaro and Tri Angle labels), with similar samples, noise and vocal filtering, it wasn't surprising that they rejected the "witchy" label. The label of "witch house" seems to be much more concrete for sites and blogs (like Pitchfork) that fetishize the splintering of genres in the internet age, and it is used more fluidly among the musicians themselves that fall roughly into this category. For example, the terms "drag" and "rape gaze" have also been used interchangeably, but haven't caught on nearly as much. Most bands themselves don't want to put themselves inside a microgenre as micro as "witch house," but these labels are useful for internet consumption and discovery of music. Musicians roughly within this genre also tend to a more ironic stance concerning this issue of identity within the genre, such as in Travis Edegy's blog post entitled "13 ways to make a great witch house song" ('#1: don't listen to any "witch house." create with your inner witch'). Note that Edegy himself puts quotes around "witch house," unsure whether to lend this label any credibility.

One topic that I plan to research further in this project is the subject of translocality and the importance of the internet in the emergence of this music. Talking to Dream Boat, they mentioned one of their influences was chopped-and-screwed rap. The connections between screwed rap and witch house are interesting. Chopped-and-screwed rap was popularized mainly by DJ Screw in Houston before his death in 2000. According to a New York Times article on DJ Screw and witch house (which gave the mainstream confirmation of witch house as a genre, even moreso than Pitchfork), Robert Disaro of Disaro Records started the label in 2007 after being a chopped-and-screwed fan in Houston, where the sphere of influence of screwed rap mainly was. However, Salem (more specifically John Holland of Salem) was making music at this same time that was heavily influenced by the sound and techniques that had been used by DJ Screw in the last decade. Salem was influenced by this sound by hearing it on the internet in Michigan, not because they had any knowledge of the chopped-and-screwed scene in Houston. In such a young genre, these translocal connections are impossible to ignore in studying the emergence of the genre.

Critical Review 10/10 - Miller "Just Add Performance"

Having experience with Guitar Hero and its fanatical players, I would agree with the article's perception of the gender imbalance among GH players. All of the hardcore players I knew in high school who could play "Through The Fire And Flames" on Expert were males; however, this doesn't seem too anomalous considering the male bias in video games in general. As one part of the chapter mentions, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are not strictly video games, given the performative aspect that makes them similar to karaoke in certain settings. On the one hand, consumers of video games are disproportionately male, but karaoke usually draws a more 20s-30s female pop-oriented crowd. The game, in its capacity to entertain both players and onlookers, has feminizing aspects, insofar as it "draws attention to the unstable, performative nature of identity" (143) through the staging of virtual (through an avatar) and live "performances." 

The aspects of the game by which "hegemony is queered . . . and subverted through overarticulation" (143) are the cause of homophobic backlash on the internet, and South Park's treatment of players as "fags." It is also the aspect of the game which allows almost anyone -- even people who would not normally perform musically for a crowd -- to entertain a whole room or bar by performing with a video game controller. The player/performer, in front of their TV or in a bar, is playing the part of a "rock god," and bringing that affect to the audience, mostly by bodily gestures. Do you agree with what the chapter suggests, that Guitar Hero performance draws attention to the nature of gender as performative? Also, is it the male aspects of rock culture or those of video game culture that are responsible for the high proportion of male GH players?

Critical Review of McRobbie (10/6)

McRobbie's discussion of the "hyper-reality of pleasure" (291) brings up the relationship between the body, the music, and technology - or, as she says, the "new technologies of the mass media." In the technological '90s, 24-hour new broadcasts are possible, so it is also possible for a DJ to sustain a rave for days on end. From this image of rave, the music seems to function as a means to a state of (possibly drug-enhanced) bodily pleasure. The neverending sets of dance music are meant to be trance-inducing, to create a certain state of consciousness and a social state between the partiers. This social state functions as a space in which to perform the new sexual norms of youth culture, such as the "emancipation" of young people, especially girls, from romance, and the introduction of "friendship, equality, and difference" into the "vocabulary of relationships" (423). As McRobbie discusses, the way rave manifests, and the "signs, symbols, objects, styles and other signifying texts" are a result of social tensions, for example the combination of the excitement of the event, the hyper-sexualized feminine form, and the fears surrounding AIDS and other dangers present at raves. How does this complicated set of social pressures and attitudes translate into a subculture, and into a reimagining of "modes of femininity"?

McRobbie makes the point that raves, during which "a saturnalia of body and mind" sometimes went on for days, transmitted the club culture of black and gay 1980s culture in the UK to white, working-class groups in the '90s. I see strong parallels to Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour," which caused a similar transmission of subculture information into the white working-class public in an earlier time period. She also used this aspect of the rave scene to connect it with an earlier drug culture, the hippie subculture of the Sixties, since raves often verged on becoming days-long peace gatherings similar to hippie festivals. This, to me, seems more subversive to the superculture than any other aspect of the rave subculture, since this claiming of the "right to party" threatens the social norms that keep economies running. In this sense can rave culture be considered political, in its definition of a space where youth can exist outside the norms of the superculture?

Project Proposal: Witch House, Virtual & Live

The musical genre "witch house" was coined in 2009 as a joke to describe the occult-themed house music that was being made by producer Travis Edegy. The meme proliferated on blogs, reaching Pitchfork Media and eventually coming to describe a new genre of music with heavy ties to industrial house music, noise, hip-hop, and even 80s goth music. (wiki) Bands such as White Ring, Salem, oOoOO, and †‡† (pronounced Ritualz) have become synonymous with the sound and aesthetic of this new genre, if witch house can really be called a new genre of music. The aesthetic of this type of music involves crosses, occult symbols and imagery, and it has borrowed the dark colors and gloom of 80s goth subculture. Edegy, who produces under the stage name Pictureplanes, said in January 2011, "No one really knows what witch house is, but there are people consciously trying to make witch house now." Even the frontman of the Deftones, Chino Moreno, has recently released a "witch house" EP in August under the stage name †††, a case where a mainstream artist is experimenting with this emergent underground sound.


There is a digital/virtual component of this project, since the emergence of witch house has depended heavily on the internet, communities such as Last.fm, blogging, and remix culture. Even the trend of witch house artists embedding digital symbols - especially crosses and upside-down crosses - in their names and their song titles, seems to be tied to the digital ways many people consume new/underground music, through Youtube, services like Last.fm, and even iTunes. However, there can and should also be a live component to this project, as witch house is moving from Last.fm, Youtube and blogs into live music culture. The current AS220 schedule has Dream Boat, "creator of monolithic witch house sounds," scheduled to play in Providence on October 9th. This ethnographic research project could utilize both perspectives - from the internet communities that began this "genre," and from within the live culture where it is just now emerging - to gain a sense of the current ways in which new music subgenres and subcultures emerge, and who is participating in subcultures like "witch house," if such a subculture could be said to really exist (whether on- or offline).