So here is what happened: I heard some mutterings in the ether about something called “witch house” which sounded intriguing, not least because I thought it might be related to what we elderly goths used to call “swirly girly gothy voice of doom.” It certainly seemed that way from the descriptions I was reading, and you have to admit “witch house” is a much more efficient genre term.
My starting point was Aural Sects‘ bandcamp page. They’re a label who have a lot of electronic artists on their roster, and if you’re into ambient noise, dark electronica, experimental noise, etc etc, get yourself over there and start clicking because you are bound to find something you like. They update frequently, so check back often.
The artists I chose to listen to I picked somewhat at random. Sometimes I liked their album art, other times I thought their name was promising and/or compelling. Witchboy was the latter. And, while I did like the songs – which incidentally sound nothing like “swirly girly gothy voice of doom” – and I find the cover art for Hollymode aesthetically pleasing, it was the first video that I watched, for a song called Heartbreaker, that really got my attention, in a what the blithering hell is going on here? kind of way.
I love that feeling, by the way. The sense of being dropped into the deep end of someone else’s deeply weird and sometimes unsettling artistic creation and having to get up to speed on the visual references on the fly. And, while I liked the tune, what I thought was really interesting was the medium. The video was made using either The Sims or animations made to look Sims-like, while also looking a Disney /Japanese horror movie mashup. And by that I mean I spotted references to both Ringu and The Little Mermaid; I’m sure there are more that have gone flying right over my head.
And then as I was getting ready to post the video, because this kind of thing HAS to be shared, I did some more clicking around and discovered that . . . Hollymode was a parody.
What I’ve found is the Spinal Tap of witch house. And like regular Spinal Tap, it’s awesome. So here, for your entertainment / amusement / possibly enlightenment, is the video in question: