Witch House: A explanation of the genre from the warped mouth of Mario Zoots

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Witch House: Bigger than "Chillwave," not as controversial as "Rapegaze," maybe existing somewhere on a plane with the short-lived, but massively influential No Wave?

The internet-seeded musical genre took on a life of its own earlier this year, with bands like Salem, Shams and our own Pictureplane being touted as players. (Brooklyn Vegan even reported on Pitchfork reporting on Witch House. How meta.)

According to Mario Zoots, a principle creator who's work is now synonymous with the cultural phenomenon -- his band Modern Witch and his multimedia art are both now integral to the sound and style -- Pictureplane is the man behind it all. It should be noted that this video statement is only Zoots' interpretation of the genre -- originally, Modern Witch wasn't necessarily sonically aligned with its contemporaries.

The intention of graduate student Nicolas O'brien's interview was to talk with the artist within his medium--literally. Zoots speaks on how his stream of consciousness art comes to be, through his art. Even more meta.

"I think there are certain qualities that make us (Modern Witch) different," Zoots says of the genre label. "But we have been put on some Witch House mix tapes lately, and plus our name has a lot to do with it."

But for the record, in case you don't know an exact definition of Witch House (we didn't until now), Zoots spells it out in this video interview.

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