∆‡∆ Grave Wave ∆‡∆ Witch House ∆‡∆ Triangle ∆‡∆

[jules]

this is not witch house, this is good beats and stuff.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtG4X6Vl60o&feature=related

[Guest nene multiple assgasms]

im not listening this until someone tells me this. "witch house" is HOUSE MUSIC or NOT HOUSE MUSIC???

 

not house music.

 

[jeyemusik]

seems this genre, unlike any before, causes hypnagogic visions that manifest themselves in british sitcom characters. i'm just wishing googleimages would let me track down a picture of Ted Maul (in the distance).

[awepittance]

i've been showing this Salem video to my friends all day, holy christ it's good. A video hasn't made me this uncomfortable and awkward since maybe the Steve Balmer 'developers' speech

 

some of might not have seen it yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q&feature=player_embedded#at=177

[vamos scorcho]

i don't really like it very much.

 

i feel like salem is more of a bs hipster thing than an interesting musical creation. i might be wrong though. i'll definitely listen to their album again but the first time i heard it i thought it sounded a lot less interesting than people have been making it out to sound.

 

it sounded like DJ Screw mixed with some loud analogue Crunk music.

 

so basically it sounded like 6 hours into a Robitussin trip. i don't need to go there.

[Guest KY]

i've been showing this Salem video to my friends all day, holy christ it's good. A video hasn't made me this uncomfortable and awkward since maybe the Steve Balmer 'developers' speech

 

some of might not have seen it yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q&feature=player_embedded#at=177

 

yeah, this video sealed the deal for me. the only witch house related shit i liked was one guy from mater suspiria vision: http://soundcloud.com/o-i-r-o/i-r-of-mater-suspiria-vision-zombie-rave-3-mixtape

and aside from that, the terminal twilight music i'd heard (one song) i REALLY liked. but absolutely everything else has done nothing for me. ehhh...basic, flat drum programming, synthesizers, and gothic hipsters?

[Dan C]

I am a gothic hipster, so this is my music.

[oscillik]

you laaaahhin wiv tha flish

[Guest KY]

I am a gothic hipster, so this is my music.

[Guest Backson]

my opinion, as stated previously

truth be told, the internet age means that bands like Salem are veiwed under a microscope when they should have flourished in obscurity until one day, years after breaking up, they are discovered and name checked as a major influence by a new wave. that would have been a better context for their style.

i think the stupidity of blogs combined with the internet's thirst to jump on anything trendy has doomed these interesting artists to ridiculousness. I hold none of them accountable for that genre name. my heart goes out to all of them.

[onecaseman]

Balam Acab and oOoOO are pretty good. Mater Suspiria Vision has some good tunes as well, but some bad ones too. I really don't like Salem except for "Dirt". I haven't checked out any other artists yet. Would love to hear some recommendations. That Lake Radio tune is not bad, Atop.

 

[youtubehd]8LT8rwCihtY[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]RCrVcmiERy0[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]z3OHLEYBiFE[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]k3NjyMSUSAo[/youtubehd]

[Atop]

Salem Dirt video is fuckin rad and Lynchy Witchy!

[autopilot]

[FLA FUR BIS FLE]

i've been showing this Salem video to my friends all day, holy christ it's good. A video hasn't made me this uncomfortable and awkward since maybe the Steve Balmer 'developers' speech

 

some of might not have seen it yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q&feature=player_embedded#at=177

 

wait. is this real? is this like, really real? wtf. it sounds like a shred. what the fuck is going on? why the fuck? who the fu-? get the fuck outta here.

[awepittance]

i've been showing this Salem video to my friends all day, holy christ it's good. A video hasn't made me this uncomfortable and awkward since maybe the Steve Balmer 'developers' speech

 

some of might not have seen it yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q&feature=player_embedded#at=177

 

wait. is this real? is this like, really real? wtf. it sounds like a shred. what the fuck is going on? why the fuck? who the fu-? get the fuck outta here.

 

haha that's what im saying, the people who run xlr8r magazine better have a little egg on their faces after watching this video... or maybe they already have? jesus shit

 

[Salvatorin]

I like how apparently organized this whole thing is. Compared to other 'planned' music scenes in the past, this one seems particularly cohesive and stuff.

[vamos scorcho]

seriously guys can we all agree that excepter are the original witch house group?

 

Excepter will get the respect some day

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

[Salvatorin]

I interpret this genre as being less of a genre than it is a bubble...one possible unification of a number of aesthetic memes that appeared during the '00s. It seems that it is taking:

• the post-BoC psychedelification of vintage electronics
  
• the vague asscociation of lofi with the occult
  
• the screwed and chopped ethic of slowing down vocals
  
• the late '00s vocoder boner
  
• the post-idm disillusionment with complexity as the hallmark of new electronica
  

and mixing the associated audio, imagery, and video to form what seems like a 'scene' but really is a kind of pop cultural 'work of art' (if you consider selective commercialization and the coordination of a fad's development over a set course of time...art).

 

I liked the practice in theory and seeing it put into play like this is actually pretty futuristic. I would like to think that the 10's will be full of this kind of shit.

[vamos scorcho]

thats a good way to break it apart.

 

 

there is a very strong element of mystery, confusion, the surreal. a band like excepter has been making music for over a decade now and over all those years i slowly find myself understanding who they are, what their music means, and so on, less and less. it just confuses me.

 

and that video of salem live, what am i supposed to think about that?

 

the image not only of the music in pictures, but of the voices and the style makes me deeply confused. are they serious? who are these people? what do they do when they get out of bed in the morning?

[vamos scorcho]

the original

 

[vamos scorcho]

Nary has a review of any of the three Excepter releases run – including this Self Destruction, their latest – that doesn’t mention drugs. Of these, the mentions rarely get beyond the following types of write-offs:

 

a. “They’re doing them so we don’t have to”

b. “What are they on and where can we get some? LOL. This music is so weird we cannot understand it. But … drugs! *nudge nudge wink wink*”

 

Either way, it makes writing on music such as theirs feel like more of an indictment than an appreciation, like the reviewers are informants and the band members – cult leader John Fell, right-hand man Dan Hougland, mouthpiece Caitlin Cook, instrumentalist Calder Martin and Nathan Corbin on synth – are wild, unrestrained agitators and conspirators begging to be caught. It’s almost as if anyone involved with even so much as listening to this music and forming an educated opinion of it, indicts themselves with an understanding of counterculture and nights lost to substance abuse in doing so.

 

But can we remove that stigma, and still assess the music? Can we trace the thought patterns without copping out on dope? We can. Nay, we should, because so few others clearly seem up to the task. In much the same way that I can only guess Self Destruction was made, I’m reminded of my first time viewing Dusan Makavejev’s 1974 film Sweet Movie – a collection of unforgettable images of the carnal and sensual that left me with more questions about the creative process than I had answers for. How do you explain to a crew the ways in which you can show things that are in your own head, and possibly never in any others? And to what quantity? To keep it happening over and over, to never leave your audience for want of surprise or astonishment?

 

In a way, that’s where Excepter comes in with their army of machines and routines, building on themes of comfort and familiarity and then slicing them lengthwise, filling them with the confusion, anxiety, and excitement of a life well-lived, and an understanding of the struggle required to achieve that state of bliss. There are words to describe these feelings, and those words are used throughout the band’s works, but good luck trying to decipher them; to the group, the human voice is used as another instrument to be controlled, time-extended, layered and obscured into the crackle of life. You’d be better off reading product labels, or the Bible. No, there’s something at stake here that the words can’t say out loud.

 

So here is one assessment: the two sides to Self Destruction represent daytime activity and nightlife freedom, from whence we go to work and do things that we have to do, and then tend to ourselves afterwards, doing that which we want to do. Side one represents the former, with the record at its loudest and most nervous right at the outset; “Shoot Me First” roils in a swarm of chanting, hi-pass filter buzzing and channel sweeps, reverberating percussion and the repetition of a three-note theme which espouses science, fiction, and the embroiling of the two. It’s as hectic as this album gets, echoing the sort of discomfort that comes with riding on crowded public transportation during a storm, when the press of interpersonal contact takes on a much more humid, unpleasant feel. No one is happy, nothing is fine, this isn’t home, this isn’t bed; therefore, this is a threat. Continuing on is the 10-minute “Bad Vibration,” following the paths set by a six-note bass vacuum vamp and an unchanging, disconnected percussion blather. These parallel lines, though entirely separate, could not exist in this track without one another, and their fading in and out of one another only serves to illustrate the power of absence. Atop this backing floats more moaning vocals and disembodied whistling, concrete tones, static, and ghostly synth sawing into cascading, pulsing transmissions that represent the drudgery of work, and the surprises that, for better or worse, occur in this period of time which is not now, nor will ever be, wholly yours. Things break, people emote, instructions are taught and learned, and frustration occurs, all at (hopefully) a low and painless simmer. Closing out is “I Don’t Get Wet in the Rain,” which follows its existential title with a floating, beatless cloud of comfortable numbness. Nothing’s wrecking your time escaping and going home, but the stress levels in the music are palpable.

 

Then, breaking almost cleanly off from the proceedings, the party gets started on side two. “BB+B (for 2B ÷ 2C)” feels busy and rushed by comparison, but coolly calculated and entertainingly so, as the tension created in the opening suite starts to dissipate. Bass frequencies roll up over and down under the clearly audible range as drum patterns bounce comfortably between dubular pursuits and straight up bangin’. Pings of squelch and scratch creep through as a measure of the beat gets louder, more in time, more into your own headspace. Words about chaos and battles are grunted under laser warfare, and the squelch becomes tonal. This is a good kinda warfare. Annihilate this weak. Get back in your own mind. Then enter into society once again with two halves of “Interplay.” Part one, “Back Room,” leads us into a downtempo, cowbelled chill space where many things are possible. “I’m flippin’ out of you,” mumbles Fell, amidst cheers to “come on.” As the low frequencies begin to coalesce and form positive electronic warm fuzziness, they bass out just as quickly. At last, triumph surfaces on part two, “Your House” – the sounds give notice of a victorious night and the clapping sounds you hear are humans being successful at humanity, where the music becomes beautiful and as close to techno completion as possible. To the layman, this will play out like TV on the Radio’s EP, minus the orchestration, the drama, or the pretense; it all blurs together in this amniotic, backlit, resonant mix of electrons bouncing off one another, of ones and zeroes rolling down in all the right places. The rewards of career perils and ennui play out in the warmth of another body and the time afforded you to create your own adventures. (Is this analysis correct? Does it matter? It works.)

 

Excepter is where you end up when you listen a lot, when you’ve made your mind up about hundreds of things so as to be educated, informed, cultured. Yet Excepter doesn’t require such criteria to enjoy it, though every little bit helps. Herein lies the conflict: how to get there (understanding) from here (chaos) in your own mind, and how to communicate it to others? Self Destruction doesn’t answer this so much as it accomplishes, creating an aural narrative through disparate and discomforting sound sources.

[Atop]

hey vamos, is this you "EXCEPTING" your own version of witchcult jams?

[Atop]

i've been showing this Salem video to my friends all day, holy christ it's good. A video hasn't made me this uncomfortable and awkward since maybe the Steve Balmer 'developers' speech

 

some of might not have seen it yet

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q&feature=player_embedded#at=177

 

wait. is this real? is this like, really real? wtf. it sounds like a shred. what the fuck is going on? why the fuck? who the fu-? get the fuck outta here.

LYNCH MANIA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3OHLEYBiFE

[vamos scorcho]

that track was really good. i like the video too

 

hey vamos, is this you "EXCEPTING" your own version of witchcult jams?

 

yeah. this shit rules!!!!!

 

this is great

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0zYmPKAP18

[YEK]

why is there always a tendency to group shit, to make a new genre or something.. so it's easier to hype it ?

music is always better when it's out of genre limits and more independent

rep +1