Balam Acab’s bewitching ‘See Birds’ EP

Balam Acab’s bewitching ‘See Birds’ EP

25 August, 2010 | 5.50AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Videos: balam acab, tri angle, witch house

I come today not to praise “witch house” but to bury it.

The problem isn’t with the name itself—in fact, I love the idea of “witch house,” but then, I generally embrace all manner of ridiculous genre names, if only because life’s too short to be serious about music all the time. (I once got Michael Mayer seriously riled up with my semi-ironic coinage of “micro-goth”; I still don’t think he’s forgiven me for it.)

No, the problem with witch house is that the music that’s been associated with it—so far, pretty much just the band Salem—has been pretty execrable, a mixture of coldwave synths and chopped ‘n’ screwed Houston rap that looks good on paper but sounds half-assed on record (and even worse on stage). Plus, where’s the house music?

Brooklyn’s Balam Acab, aka the 19 year old Alec Koone, is also getting lumped in with this witch house thing, at least according to Pitchfork, who gave his debut EP an 8.0 score and a swooning review. There’s precious little house music here, either, but the difference with Balam Acab is that the music is actually good. Really good, in fact.

The five tracks on his ‘See Birds’ EP are a hazy sprawl of buzzing sawtooth synths, blunted drum-machine beats, and woozily treated vocals; you can definitely detect the influence of Burial, Flying Lotus, wonky dubsteppers like Zomby, and the psychedelic whatchamacallit of Mount Kimbie. There might even be a smidgen of Oneohtrix Point Never‘s DMT-powered escalators to heaven.

It’s all very now, right down to the Mayan-inspired name (2012, anyone?). But you can tell that Koone is on to something. I’ll be playing ‘See Birds (Moon)’ in my creepazoid ambient DJ sets, and I’ll be listening carefully to whatever he does next. Same goes for Tri Angle, the Brooklyn label behind the record. Maybe they’ll manage to redeem the “witch house” tag after all.

Balam Acab, ‘See Birds’ [Tri Angle]

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