VON HAZE
Thanks to technology it’s now possible to get sick of a musical trend before anyone else figures out what it is. “Drag music” or “witch house,” or, in the terminology of a scandal-raising Pitchfork item, “rape gaze,” seems to be about wedding DJ Screw’s atmospherics (hip-hop beats pitched down to a slo-slo-mo blur suitable for tripping on cough syrup) to 4AD-ish goth (ambient synths and serif-heavy typefaces). Then again, despite the media attention the subgenre’s attracted, it’s still only a couple of months old and based on about three albums’ worth of material, so I say it’s still up for grabs. On one hand, a remix of Von Haze’s goth-country “Outside the Night” by witch-house standard-bearers Salem—working off an edit of the Brooklyn duo’s original by local EBM-influenced outfit White Car—suggests the style can incorporate a considerable amount of synthesized Enya-esque New Age and still read as . . . whatever it’s called. On the other, a remix of Salem’s “Asia” (from their critically divisive debut album, King Night) by neo-ravers Jokers of the Scene makes an argument that it could just as easily become a black-streaked mirror-world reflection of today’s trance revival.
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“Without Me”
(Slow Fizz)
SHAPERS
House Sounds, Seafarer, Dead Sheriff, Males and Females Wed 12/15, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, 773-278-6600 or 866-468-3401, $8, 21+.
Shapers, Chants Thu 12/16, 10 PM, the Whistler, 2421 N. Milwaukee, 773-227-3530, free, 21+.
