✝ DE△D VIRGIN ✝ - "Anxieties"

I imagine that most of you who read my blog regularly won't have much of an idea about what Witch House is. It's up for debate whether your're lucky, woefully misinformed or spend a non-excessive amount of time on the internet. It's odd that I haven't posted on it because I listen to large amounts of it, I've just never gotten round to posting about it or really mentioning it, though I do tweet about it.

Basically, Witch House was the buzz genre of 2011. A massive amount of the blogosphere started going crazy over it, and I'm now sure that a sizeable chunk of said sphere is devoted to it. The genre isn't like many genres which emerge from similar areas or social groups. It surfaced organically online, starting with a few MySpace/blog artists posting tracks of creepy, slowed down electro noise. The scene has developed a joking fascination with the occult, death, morbidity and peppering track and album names with symbols and creepy lettering - Ðł$$Ø₡łλŦłVE ŦƦλ₦₡E Ðł$ØƦÐEƦ$, ▲|||, †‡† being just a few haunting my iTunes. The "fascination" with darkness, death and witchcraft is (most of the time...) actually part of a massive in-joke, which is by and large what the genre has been. Last year was a good year for hoax genres as a matter of fact, what with Die Antwood jokingly pioneering "zef", the hardcore gangsta rap of South Africa...



Die Antwoord were pretty funny and the tunes actually quite enjoyable for a while. Then the joke began to wear thin. A bit like Jack Black.

And as 2010 ended and 2011 began, I wondered what would happen to Witch House. Would it turn sour as quickly as chillwave, its preceding over-hyped electro sub-genre, which is already a cringe worthy memory among most respectable inernet music sources? Would it evolve, mutate, warp? Would it dilute and hit the charts, superceding dubstep?

Truth is folks, I'm not entirely sure. A massive amount of Witch House is unsurprisingly pretty crap to listen to. Yeah sure, I don't doubt (always) that the producer gets the joke. But I've still got to sit and listen to their track. I'm not doing that for a track that offers me nothing whatsoever.

Well in the midst of a lot of interminable Witch House dross, I stumbled across the blog Fokkawolfe several months ago. Fokkawolfe has been my main source and gateway for all things Witch House because it almost invariably manages to find the really good stuff! It's in my list of favourite music sites/blogs on the right of the screen so check it out, it's run by a 28 year old British dude called Laurence.

A while ago they posted on a Witch House act called ✝ DE△D VIRGIN ✝. I liked their groove but didn't really investigate. Then, I checked on Fokkawolfe last week and discovered they'd made a new EP available for free, called Anxieties.

It's pretty immense folks. It's got so much going for it. It veers between crisp break beats, looming warped dubstep bass throbs and glaring dance synth. A lot of it is pretty dancey, and the atmosphere is fantasically dark. Waves of sound flood in one from side and crash against sharp, jagged shores of beats, throwing distorted screams, orchestras and synths around like the wreckage of an oil tanker. If you like electro, dubstep or anything dark and ominous, get in on this folks.

It's available on their Bandcamp page (click here) under a "name your price" policy, so you can grab it for free if you want. Two tracks streaming down below:







Like I've said, I don't know exactly what will become of Witch House this year. I do know however that quite a few Witch House artists have emerged out of the influx that are actually pretty talented at making electronic music. So watch out in future guys. Hope you find these ✝ DE△D VIRGIN ✝ tracks as cool as I do. Best Witches.

Resolutions and Reasons

Well a slightly belated Happy New Year to you! I hope you all indulged in sufficient merriment over the festive period. Now it's January. It's cold, wet, the middle of winter, none of us have any money because we bought presents and then spent all our Christmas money before New Year's Eve, radio DJs never seem to shut up about it being New Year and you've probably already failed to go jogging. Fun!

You're probably the same, but I've had an extremely mixed relationship with New Year's Resolutions. One year I'm for, the next I'm against. There's that constant battle between a scepticism of the concept in general, your own laziness and human inclination to fail, and your optimism, your hope, your determination. You know that, physically, you CAN do whatever it is you'd like to, so why don't you? It's odd.

This year, I've been continually toying with the idea. I wasn't sure where my sword was going to fall on the proverbial battle ground this year. Then I read a blog by a guy called Michael Hyatt. I follow him on Twitter, and he's the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, a Christian publishing company in the US. He is probably the best blogger I read. He is the master of crafting blog posts. They're frequent, succinct and to the point. Definitely follow him if you're into that sort of thing.

He wrote a post called "How To Make New Year's Resolutions Stick". If you want help keeping yours, read it. It's what persuaded me to make some resolutions this year and to treat them in the way I am.

Basically, he says you need to:
1. Make them specific, not generalised sentiments
2. Keep them few in number
3. Keep them SMART (see the blog post for the meaning of the acronym)
4. Write them down
4. Go public

Well, that's what I'm doing. I've made 5. Some are quite personal and just a bit irrelevant to this post right now but one is ALL about these posts.

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION FOR 2011:
Write at least 2 blog posts a week between Monday 3rd of January 2011 and 31st December 2011.

There it is. It's out there. It's written down. And if you are a faithful reader of my blog I'd like you to pull me up on it (if you remember...) Since I started focussing specifically on music in this blog back in early October, I've pretty much averaged that, so I'm now making a strong point of it, determining myself.

At the start of a New Year, I'd also like to reassert the purpose of this blog, remind you (and myself) of why I write it.

1. It's cathartic. Writing this blog is, I guess, something I do because I want to vent my thoughts. Get them into a place where they're in front of me, manageable and subject to review.

2. To share with you. Yes you. As well as wanting to get my thoughts out for my own sake, I want to share them with other like minded or perhaps not so like minded people. I find it difficult sometimes to either find people who think and talk about music like I do, or to make enough time to talk to people who DO think and talk about it like I do. I really do hope that my thoughts on music and the music that I share/post enriches you in a very real, sincere way.

3. To practice. Practice may be the wrong word, but I want to be a music journalist. And I want to be as good at writing about music as possible, and to make myself as employable as possible one day - hopefully to a music publication that I love and respect. Writing this blog - and perhaps more importantly, writing it in a disciplined manner - will hopefully help me along my way.

So I hope that you do have a very happy 2011. A 2011 full of blessings and growth. Not necessarily happiness. I saw philosopher called Peter Vardy speak last year (woah, 2010 is now LAST YEAR!) who made a very vocal point of stating that the purpose of life is not for you to be comfy, content and happy. But I hope that in 365 days time, you will be more enriched and hopefully closer to God than you are now. God bless you this year, and may your resolutions be resolute.

Life, Love and Music

I've been thinking about life recently. There's been a lot going on for me recently. I'm in my last year of school I turned eighteen a few weeks ago. I passed my driving test last week. I'm pretty much finished with university applications. My girlfriend and I passed the two and a half year mark in our relationship.

My mind has wandered to and fro, past and present yadda yadda yadda and I've thought more and more about what I want to do with my live in terms of career and work, where I'd like to live and all that adult jazz. My life is totally in God's hands and I don't know a thing abbout what the next ten second or ten years hold. but my heart is moving more and more between wanting to be a music journalist or critic, and I've been swirling all sorts of pipe dreams like starting a huge website like Pitchfork or DrownedInSound or a magazine or fanzine or even a record label one day. The time, resources and know-how are all lacking sadly at the moment, but I do however have this blog!

So, as of now and after this post, I'm going to try and share new bands and music and songs that I've discovered and got from all over the internet and word of mouth and wherever. I'll probably share my favourite oldies with you as well. I'll still post regular blog posts on whatever takes my fancy. We shall see where we're taken! I just really love the idea of sharing music I love, putting it out there and finding like minded people who agree with me and are made happy by something I've suggested to them. I don't want to ramble on in one of those mission statements that I'm incredibly earnest about but no one else really gives a toss about. It's all about good music at the end of the day right? So. Onwards!

Why Do We Blog?

Meandering home from school today, a thought chanced upon me. Why do people blog? I'm sure there are lots of other blogs on this subject and I'm sure there's some immense degree of irony involved in that somehwere, but I'll just muse for a little bit.
I reckon that blogging is very rarely shameless self promotion. And I think for a minority (a large minority, but a minority) it's akin to having a diary or venting on someone (I wonder how many blogs on the internet end with the phrase "rant over") And if we're honest, most of us don't particularly care about the latest baby photos of someone we don't know from across the Atlantic. So THAT'S not why we blog.

I think the main reason people blog is because humans are a people of communication. Admittedly in our detached 21st century world, comunication can often be hard to find, due to technology and what not, but, ironically, I think internet blogging is all about communication. All literature, film, theatre etc. is communication, and blogging's on that list as well. It's just what we do as humans. It's part of who we are. We want to relate and communicate. As a Christian I'd say that is 100% tied to humans being made in God's image i.e- we're like Him in certan respects. God is incredibly communicative and relational, and our NEED for communication is trait from Him.
So I hope I've communicated something via this... see what I did there?