Is it possible to write about White Ring without touching on the whole Witch House thing? Nah, it's really not. We all need to make excuses for things we like. This is the internet.
Witch House is/was a visibly passing trend among the general miasma that has swept the country along with the implied mantra, It Is Now Okay To Wear Black Again. Chopped and screwed Houston shit is often cited, but I really track the whole thing to Burial's albums. Regardless of influence, it makes sense that a rebooted Goth subculture would use something to get eyeliner'd types dancing besides post-punk or the later Wax Trax backbones that once dominated. So why not hip-hop?
What we got was a genre far too specific to grow into anything interesting. This is why bold declarations of genre don't really work too early on. Remember when dubstep was the "undefined genre"? Even that fell victim to THE WOBBLE SYNTH as soon as people managed to pin the whole thing down. Meanwhile Witch House got tied up into lazy Burial imitations and lots of un-Googleable names. Because that's what everybody was doing, I guess? It's the best recent example of a scene that never really was, just a collection of unimpressive bedroom beats with some meaningless occult imagery to go along with the whole thing.
Goth kids moved on before it really got anywhere. Blogs followed it for a good five months or so before dumping it all. Now that I've gotten what is essentially a giant excuse out of the way:
White Ring has been left standing. They've put out only a small handful of tracks, but their work stands above the rest. They wear a proud gangsta rap influence, with gunshot samples on prominent display. Theirs is a more organic sound, song beats and synths, very little reliance on horror tapes or gloomy samples in general.
They just released a series of remixes. The sound is unmistakably theirs. If you can get over the witchy associations, it'd be worth playing for some people to dance to.
Learn To Love The Ring, Not The Witch: Download
No comments:
Post a Comment