Witches

Music might seem like an inherently extroverted proposition. Music travels outward. A musician creates sounds that travel out to a listener’s ear. Throughout history, most music was created to be enjoyed in some kind of a social setting, be it drinking around the campfire, dancing in the tavern, praising in the church, or weeping in the concert hall. And it seems like many, if not most, musicians are total show-offs.

But with the advent of the home stereo system, and, more recently, home recording technology, new, incredibly introspective possibilities have opened for types of music that draw the listener inward, like some sonic meditation. (WOMB)—even the name is evocative of a warm, comfortable place within the body—is moody, introspective music. Dark, fuzzy, overdriven keyboards lead the music, with brooding minor key melodies. The ethereal, mostly indecipherable vocals are intoned rather than sung, often laden with distortion, echo and other effects, and seem to haunt the music.

(WOMB) seems to have a lot in common with the Michigan group Salem, and other “witch house” bands, a new sub-sub-sub-genre that combines downbeat Goth rock and heavy industrial music with a bit of grimy hip-hop and noisy, glitchy electronica. (Sorry for all the buzzwords, but this music is unusually avant garde for the local scene.) (WOMB) also draws on the loud shoegaze rock of My Bloody Valentine, especially the trick of burying a catchy melody under a wall of distortion so it only emerges after multiple listens. Neat stuff, especially if you like to listen to music while standing still, feeling sad, and staring at your feet.