My friend Tyler is pretty involved in the witch house / underground music scene (and makes music himself which is very good in my humble opinion) and he offered to review my track! I'm super grateful for his input and he wrote a really good piece that encompassed both my branding and the song itself, as well as hinting at future output. It's awesome to hear from someone who shares my passion for this scene and understands its unique approaches to marketing and aesthetics :) Here's a link to the post itself, but it's private on his Tumblr so I'm not sure if other people can see it, so I'll also paste the text.
VPVVVPV is a new music act coming out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their SoundCloud and Bandcamp hosts songs with a variety of genres, so far being Witch House, Ambient, Breakcore, and Footwork. The track in particular I’m here to discuss today is of the Witch House genre, the song’s titled ‘ABU GHRAIB.’ The name being a reference to the war crimes committed by the United States to detainees in the early stages of the Iraqi War. VPVVVPV mentions on the front page of their website; “VPVVVPV IS MADE IN AMERICA AND CALLING ATTENTION TO THE AWFUL CRIMES OCCURING AS A RESULT OF US OCCUPATION IN IRAQI PRISONS!”
Now, onto the music. The song and whole aesthetic of VPVVVPV seems to invoke nostalgia in the listeners, whether that’s intentional or not is not up to me to decide but the website presentation (https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/), the haunting synths, the gifs that hang proudly on the website, all give the familiar feeling to 2000s teens of coming fresh off of craigslist and checking up on your favorite, probably considered weird by your friend group, niche music act. I’ve said enough about the vibe/aesthetic, the sound itself is, like stated before, very witch house-y. While my knowledge of witch house is extremely limited, I can see similarities to the style of sound that made groups such as CRIM3S and SALEM attract a cult fanbase. With the resurgence of witch house thanks to artists such as Sematary, the aforementioned SALEMs return in 2020, and a bunch of hungry, talented kids trying to make art inspired by the greats of the past, it’ll be interesting to see where VPVVVPV cements themselves in the current witch house landscape if they continue their journey in the sound. As I mentioned before, they have a plethora of genres already listed on their pages in the short time they’ve been active, so it’s hard to pinpoint what VPVVVPV will sound like going from here.
You can keep up with VPVVVPV and their future releases by clicking any of these links:
https://vpvvvpv.bandcamp.com/music
https://soundcloud.com/vpvvvpv
https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/
https://www.instagram.com/898v898/
“- [ COMING SOON ] 'SERPENTINE DREAM THEORY’ Extended play
- [ COMING SOON ] 'ABU GHRAIB’ MUSIC VIDEO”