Witch house is a form of Electronic music that emerged during the late 2000s. It was born from an eclectic pool of influences, including drum programming and rhythms derived from Southern Hip Hop (Memphis Rap in particular); the sludgy, hypnotic, and surreal sound and mixing techniques of Chopped and Screwed; the minimal, gothic, and sorrowful Darkwave and Ethereal Wave; the lush, ethereal production of certain developments of late 2000s Synthpop and Indietronica, particularly Chillwave; and the dreamy and dense, wall-of-sound textures of Shoegaze and Dream Pop. Singlehandedly pioneered by SALEM and further developed by later prominent figures like CRIM3S and Unison, witch house merged the aforementioned influences into a nocturnal, occult-themed/horror-inspired, and murky genre featuring altered, slowed down and heavily processed samples laid on top of slow Hip Hop-derived drum machine rhythms, "rumbly", noisy basslines or even high-pitched leads, and droning, dense synthesizers. Though the "witch house" name - coined by Pictureplane's Travis Egedy as a joke in 2009 - wasn't accepted by all its producers, even considered to some a false label popularized by the music press, it was nonetheless embraced by the most of movement, beating rival terms like "screwgaze" and "drag".
