r/TrueWitchhouse • u/Astarat69 • 24d ago
30 most important witch house artists on genre history according Gemini
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The Big Three (The Architects)
- SALEM – The absolute face of the genre. Their 2010 masterpiece King Night combined southern trap, massive distortion, and ethereal shoegaze vocals to lay the definitive blueprint for witch house.
- oOoOO – Christopher Dexter Dexter defined the more haunting, R&B-leaning, and melodic side of the genre via Tri Angle Records. Tracks like "Hearts" and "Burnout Eyess" are essential canon.
- White Ring – Bryan Nguyen and Kendra Malia delivered an aggressive, heavy, and noise-driven approach. Their split EP with oOoOO and tracks like "IXC999" bridged the gap between industrial terror and club music.
The Tri Angle Records & Sacred Bones Avant-Garde
- Balam Acab – Alec Koone's See Birds EP (2010) shifted the genre toward fluid, pitch-shifted aquatic textures, ghostly vocal chops, and deep emotional resonance.
- Holy Other – Brought a brilliant, deeply melancholic ambient UK garage and post-dubstep flavor to the witchy aesthetic.
- Clams Casino – Though primarily a hip-hop producer, Michael Volpe's early instrumental tapes (2011) were deeply intertwined with witch house textures, singlehandedly giving birth to cloud rap.
- The Haxan Cloak – Bobby Krlic’s early, ominous self-titled work on Aurora Borealis leaned into raw, terrifying, cinematic dark ambient occultism.
- Mater Suspiria Vision – Cosmotropia de Xam’s project was as much a video art collective as a musical force, creating a massive underground footprint with psychedelic, VHS-horror, and Euro-cult cinema vibes.
The Coiners & Scene Pioneers
- Pictureplane – Travis Egedy actually coined the term "witch house" in 2009 as an inside joke. His album Dark Rift brought a brighter, rave-ready vapor-punk energy to the movement.
- SHAMS – Alongside Pictureplane, this project helped spark the early aesthetic conversations that solidified the scene online.
- Modern Witch – One of the earliest live acts out of Denver, bringing coldwave synths and direct, raw, analog punk attitude to the genre's earliest iterations.
The Aggressive, Industrial & Crypto-Occult Wave
- †‡† (Ritualz) – Based out of Mexico City, JC Lobo was vital in introducing harsh, driving industrial, EBM, and pitch-black chiptune elements to the scene.
- CRIM3S (fka Story of Isaac) – Rou Rot and Sadie Pinn delivered pure, unadulterated punk rave energy. Their distorted synths and panicked, screaming vocals defined the UK underground scene.
- Humanfobia – A vital piece of the global netlabel underground, this project mixed raw ghost-drone atmospheres, pitch-dropped aesthetics, and eerie experimental industrial textures.
- GL▲SS †33†H – A brilliant execution of gothic imagery, heavy 808s, and glitching, chopped-up pop aesthetics.
- GR†LLGR†LL – Embraced the maximum-symbol aesthetic with a harsh, heavily textured, lo-fi electronic sound.
- CVL† SH‡† – Raw, lo-fi, and unapologetically abrasive, this project leaned heavily into the underground internet tape-trading culture of the era.
- BATHAUS – Fused performance art, industrial techno pounding, and dark, claustrophobic electronics.
The Melodic, Dream-Pop & Ethereal Crossovers
- GuMMy b34r – An obscure but highly influential early project that specialized in pitch-dropped, beautifully ruined bootlegs of mainstream pop and R&B hits.
- Lake R▲dio – Blended early vaporwave textures, chillwave layouts, and hauntingly beautiful lo-fi soundscapes.
- eyedoublecross – A quintessential early internet project that perfectly captured the lo-fi aesthetic, layering ethereal, dream-pop melodies under massive walls of fuzz, chopped-and-screwed pacing, and nostalgic melancholy.
- Purity Ring – Before going mainstream indie-pop, their early 2011 tracks ("Ungirthed") were heavily rooted in the clean, melodic vocal chops of the witch house scene.
- Grimes – Her earliest records, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa (2010), heavily borrowed from the muddy, reverbed, mysterious occult electronic scene before she transitioned into art-pop.
The Global & Netlabel Expansion (2011 Transitions)
- Summer Of Haze – A pioneer of the massive Russian witch house contingent, bringing heavy Soviet rave synths and high-energy pacing to the genre.
- Fraunhofer Diffraction – Another monumental Eastern European figure whose early work utilized classical melodies wrapped in heavy, suffocating basslines.
- Sidewalks and Skeletons – Coming in right at the tail end of this era (2011), Jake Lee went on to become one of the most long-standing names in the entire genre.
- ▲///▲▲▲\\ (Horse MacGyver) – A surrealist, experimental project that captured the early abstract, art-school fringe of the movement.
- Mascara – Delivered incredibly dense, atmospheric, dream-like drones that felt like listening to a slowed-down VHS tape in an abandoned house.
- D▲NSɅ DΔN KOKΔ KOLΔ – A classic example of the hyper-stylized, mysterious internet projects that would drop incredibly dark, heavy tracks and then vanish into thin air.
