Day 2 of trying to write music alone with a 9-month old puppy. I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m getting anything done and, in part, it’s because we took our first trip to an off-leash dog park yesterday. She got to run around, and then she slept a lot while I worked on this piece. I haven’t gotten much sleep so far this month, so I hoped to get this done in a reasonable time.
We’ll come back to that.
- Revenant (White Vapors Mix) Ray Toler 10:11
While I was cleaning up my project file for Don’t Fight the Funk, I found a stray instrument track with a cryptic comment: Saving for use in Witch House. I had forgotten about it (which I knew I would, hence the comment) but I moved it into a fresh track and played it back. It was the bass sound/line that opens the track.
Which House?
I first learned about Witch House a few years ago while living in Milwaukee. I had gone to an Ableton Live user group meeting and one of the people there was playing his most recent track. It was one of those challenging music moments, because I didn’t really like it that much, but I’ll never criticize someone who’s putting him or herself out there. Playing your music for strangers, especially in person, takes guts.
The music itself was super repetitive, mostly bass, and had some weird noisecore/texture thing going on. And again, I really didn’t like it much. And like the first time I had sushi, I disliked it so much that I kept wanting a bit more. “Ugh. This is terrible. Let me try another.”
If you look up the history of Witch House, you’ll find that it’s a Tumblr joke that took on a life of its own. I’ll leave the research to you, but it’s hilarious to me that what was initially a snide comment on became its own world.
What’s even funnier is that when I started researching it a bit more last year, I discovered a few bands that I really like, White Ring1I recommend the album Gate of Grief (2018). and Blvck Ceiling2This band is a little all over the place, but I’ve enjoyed the album Nacht (2024). Their earlier stuff is a bit more raw. in particular. It’s like where I think goth was going before it got all prettified, coupled with what I loved most about early industrial. Mechanical. Distorted. Dark and disturbed (or disturbing). Nearly incomprehensible vocals drowned in reverb while the trap hip-hop beats and 32nd note high hats dance around in the moonlight.
This isn’t music you listen to before a night out clubbing. Well, not that kind of clubbing anyway.3Kidding. I’m kidding! It’s not that it glamorizes violence, it’s more that it revels in suffering. At least, that’s some of what I get out of it.
There’s a ton of gatekeeping going on, and it was largely to keep out the squares. Track and band names use extended character sets or super-weird letter substitutions to keep from being included in search engines. In a way, it’s a return to the old-school way underground bands spread in the tape-sharing world. If someone didn’t introduce you to it, it was a near certainty that you’d never hear about it.
So This is Witch House?
Yeah, there’s the thing. I have no idea if this would actually fit on a Witch House playlist or not. The bass is good, the beat’s pretty good… the overall vibe is dark, but I’m not sure it really would qualify as Witch House. What it does do very well is provide an environment you can completely and totally sink into, especially if you’re under the influence of one intoxicant or another.4I will neither confirm nor deny that I was in an altered state of any kind while writing it.
This is a track that 20-year old me would put on when I’d brought a girl back to my place. It’s sexual, it grinds and slithers. That’s nearly entirely because of the vocals. I’m not really going to go too much into who it is, what it is, or how I did things, because I think that’s part of its whole vibe. It’s not too hidden, though, if you want to do a little investigative journalism.
And Then Things Turned Ugly
I hit the 5:00 mark and things start to change. This was actually a happy… well, not accident, but slight change in direction. It was getting late, and I thought I was actually going to be in bed at a reasonable time, but while looking for a second drum pattern to provide some variety or embellishment, I hit a loop that was twice the speed.5This is an old trick of mine from the hardware sampler days when I was in the club. I’d play the looped beat I’d sampled in an octave. You get some really cool patterns that way. Initially, I didn’t think much of it, but after just a few minutes of looping with the 2x loop, I realized that I really liked what was happening to the track. And now that means I need to follow that rabbit for awhile.
It actually didn’t take me too long to embrace it all (thank you, Song-A-Day) and I decided that if I was going down that road, I was going all the way to the end. Long mix. Slow grindy sex groove into half-speed grindy trance. It may be too long for other people, but I’m almost always surprised how quickly the second five minutes goes by.
So ultimately, I was up later than I intended, but I’m really pleased with the result. I don’t think it’s Witch House, but that’s another thing I’m increasingly doing: going back to writing music entirely because I want to listen to it. I suspect if I’d done that all along, more people would have heard it.
Colophon
Instruments & Samples
AAS Multiphonics, Plasmonic, M-Tron Pro IV, Hive2, Cycles, Tactic 2
Effects, Mixing, & Mastering
Fabfilter, Soundtoys Phase Mistress and PanMan, Gullfoss
Image Credit: Wallpaperflare.com
Notes
- 1I recommend the album Gate of Grief (2018).
- 2This band is a little all over the place, but I’ve enjoyed the album Nacht (2024). Their earlier stuff is a bit more raw.
- 3Kidding. I’m kidding!
- 4I will neither confirm nor deny that I was in an altered state of any kind while writing it.
- 5This is an old trick of mine from the hardware sampler days when I was in the club. I’d play the looped beat I’d sampled in an octave. You get some really cool patterns that way.