Wicca Phase Springs Eternal ||Absolute in Doubt|| Live in Hamburg 14.11.19
/ jan.connor
/ soccerwolf89
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Inside the Highly Strange World of Wicca Phase Springs Eternal
How an unlikely punk kid from Scranton began an emotional trap phenomenon called Gothboiclique, now forced to move forward after Lil Peep's passing.
With roots in witch house and early 2010s Tumblr rap culture, Wicca Phase is a shapeshifting sound unified by a vivid aesthetic. It was initially a way for Adam to experiment with electronic music outside the indie rock circles he was already involved with through his former band Tigers Jaw-who, at the time, were outliers in themselves. Tigers Jaw naturally gravitated towards Philadelphia’s DIY scene, playing with their peers in bands like Balance and Composure and Title Fight, but never really fit exactly. Something about the choppy structure and obtuse lyricism of their earlier releases was always a little off-kilter, a little darker. Opting to leave the band in 2013, Adam has since doubled down on that darkness and channelled it into Wicca Phase. Whether it’s a hype club album driven by icy synths, relatively straightforward acoustic-based tracks, or warm, melodic trap that lands somewhere in between, his music always has the same eerie identity.Trying to give a potted history of Gothboiclique is as hazy as trying to explain how your friendship group came together-and, to be honest, probably wouldn’t sound that different. Adam got the ball rolling on Wicca Phase by linking up with producers on Tumblr, trying to establish a network of collaborators so the project didn’t always have to rest on hitting up people he didn’t know for beats or features. “Gothboiclique” was the name of a beat Cold Hart (who uses the alias Jayyeah for his production) sent to him. Adam tweeted “RT if you’re goth boi clique” jokingly, and it caught on. From there, it came to define a group of likeminded songwriters and producers that also shared members with Thraxxhouse-a similar but much larger collective based in its co-founder Mackned’s hometown of Seattle.
Despite growing up in different states with different backgrounds and different pathways into music, the members of Gothboiclique are drawn together by a mutual punk ethos and a shared pool of influences (Blink-182 being the most common) that acts as the through line for all their projects, both individual and collaborative. They communicate via group chat and work as a band would-vocals, production, someone playing guitar, someone programming the drums. These days, Adam says, they’re “learning how to make songs that are structured more like traditional rock or pop songs, rather than just getting a beat and working with it”-a sentiment that’s truer of the Gothboiclique sub-group Misery Club than anything else. VICE
14 ноя 2019
