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// B △ NDxN▲MES \\ Unorthodox Orthography, 1969–2014

// B △ NDxN▲MES \ Unorthodox Orthography, 1969–2014. Joseph Pentangelo CUNY Graduate Center. Rationale. Musicians frequently alter their orthographies for two main reasons: to set themselves apart (from the mainstream or their peers)

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// B △ NDxN▲MES \\ Unorthodox Orthography, 1969–2014

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  1. //B△NDxN▲MES\\Unorthodox Orthography, 1969–2014 Joseph Pentangelo CUNY Graduate Center

  2. Rationale Musicians frequently alter their orthographies for two main reasons: • to set themselves apart (from the mainstream or their peers) • to foster a sense of community among bands who share a given orthographic feature • 1960s+: Intentional misspelling - sets apartBeatles, DJ KoolHerc, Weezer • 1969+: Heavy Metal Umlaut - communityBlue Öyster Cult, MötleyCrüe, Queensrÿche • 1980s+: Non-alphabetic signs - sets apartPrince’s symbol, !!!, SunnO)))) • 2010s: Witch House - sets apart AND creates community†GR▲VEL†, Ω╪Ω , G△Z△

  3. Typology Two types of glyphs: • Accessible on standard keyboard; alphanumeric plus punctuation (Common) • Inaccessible on standard keyboard; symbols (Arcane) Three types of usages: • Decorative • Allographic • Symbolic (Ideographic or logographic)

  4. Genre Table • Metal and Punk: Decorative, common • Indie: Symbolic, arcane and common • Pop and Hip-Hop: Decorative and allographic, common • Electronic (non-Witch House): Allographic and symbolic, common • Witch House: Decorative, arcane; allographic and symbolic, arcane and common

  5. Metal Umlauts • No impact on pronunciation. • 1969 – AmonDüül II • 1970 – Blue Öyster Cultfor the “Wagnerian aspect” of Metal. • 1970 – Black Sabbath’s single Paranoid spelled Paranoïd for purely decorative reasons.

  6. Metal Umlauts • Name drawn from board game, “Husker Du?” • When practicing Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” they couldn’t remember the French part, so yelled random foreign phrases. • Not a Metal band, but a Hardcore Punk band.

  7. Metal Umlauts • Used by many prominent Metal bands, including Motörhead, MötleyCrüe, and Queensrÿche • Parodied by Spinal Tapand, later, G̈r̈oẗus̈. • Fell out of fashion, late ‘80s. • Now used by Punk andGrindcore bands aswell (Assück, LeftöverCrack), and occasionally inHip-Hop (Jaÿ-Z, Dälek)

  8. Bügsküll DC: How do you pronounce the name of your band? Is it Boogskooll? SB: No it is just bugskull the umlauts are there to make smiley faces.

  9. SunnO))) • Drone Metal • Named for an amplifierbrand • “Sun”

  10. Popular Music • 1971 – Led Zeppelin’s 4th album 1983 – Freur 1993 - Prince

  11. 2000s+ Popular Music and Hip-Hop • P!nk • Ke$ha • A*Teens • *NSYNC • DeadMau5 • ?uestlove • A$AP Rocky

  12. Pop • Despite formative experimentations with off-the-wall symbols (Led Zeppelin, Freur, and Prince), modern pop’s use is much more limited. • Only use them allographically or decoratively. • P!nk or *NSYNC • Pop is about popularity; it’s hard to be popular if people can’t search for your band online or if they feel dumb trying to pronounce it.

  13. Indie • ∆ (Alt-J, for the Apple keyboard combination to type it) • The xx (Which people thought for a long while was called Dos Equisor The Exes)

  14. Indie • Only use them as a symbol; this helps set it apart from pop. • That being said, the symbols themselves are generally simple and inoffensive. • Really just another level of setting a given band apart, but no level of community.

  15. Electronic Music • !!! Named after closed captions in a tape of “The Gods Must Be Crazy” where Khoisan clicks are rendered as ! • Pronounced as any three sounds repeated, usually chkchkchk

  16. Witch House • Witch House is an Electronic subgenre • Came to prominence in 2010 • Aesthetics: low-fidelity, spooky, superficially occult themed (lots of triangles and crosses); stresses symmetry • Musical Influences: Chopped and Screwed, Chillwave, Shoegaze (underground movements in Electronic and Alternative music)

  17. Triangle in the Occult • “The threefold nature of the universe…the mystic number three…the spiritual world.” (Cooper 1978) • Crowley, Pyramids, Illuminati, etc.

  18. M∆S▴C∆RA • More triangles, here used as allographs of <A> and decoratively • Visual symmetry (more or less)

  19. Playful symmetry, swapping the first letters of the two words through the two symmetrical triangles. • Triangles are a huge emblem of Witch House • Reference to Twin Peaks (spooky!)

  20. Crosses in Dark Music • Perhaps counterintuitive? • Crosses used by several “dark” bands • Popularized by Black Sabbath • “Signifies acceptance of death or suffering and sacrifice.” (Cooper 1978)

  21. “Ritualzzz” and “Crosses”

  22. Glyphs are inconsistent: † may be T or I; ∆ may be A or D; †, ∆, Λand ▲, may be used as both allographs and symbols, sometimes within the same name. • Gr†llGr†ll • GL▲SS †33†H • †Crystal▲Clouds† • ∆AIMON • G△Z△ • A N D R Λ S • Λ (“Arc”) • Many bands mix arcane and common symbols as allographs (e.g. H∆UNT3D HOUS3) and many mix arcane allographs with decorative elements (e.g. †GR▲VEL†) but, strangely, no band ever mixes common symbol allographs with decorative elements (e.g. • † PO3 † or something)

  23. Other Witch House Names: oOoOO xix ᄼᄽᄾ ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ

  24. Many Witch House groups are impossible to search for.

  25. Witch House From a Witch-House.com thread regarding ~▲†▲~: teacake wrote: Ok, so I've been growing increasingly frustrated telling people about this guy's work. How the hell do you say his name? chemicalxkid wrote: i just do this little dance where i shake my arms aroundthen i bend my elbows and touch my hands above my head to make a triangleand then i make a crossthen vice versa.I don't have too many friends.

  26. Witch House • ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜon his name:“[It] has the meaning of 'doppelganger' and also 'split personality' […] As you see, some parts of the name are mirrored and some differ.” • Λon using symbols: “I like how using symbols means favouring an aesthetic choice over a more practical one. I morph my voice in the music, and wear costumes that make it impossible to see who I am when I play live – and I enjoy the anonymity it affords me.”

  27. Witch House • A sense of insiderness about how to pronounce, spell out, and learn about bands • “It seems that bands […] have purposefully employed the use of Unicode symbols in their names to effectively dodge the regular Google visitor traffic, thus creating some sort of a ‘lexical darknet’ that only the discerning, enthusiastic, and hardworking can find.” (Poached) • “The most internet genre ever.” (The Guardian)

  28. Witch House • Witch House’s orthographic conventions, which emphasize community, are the logical successor to a process begun by the Heavy Metal Umlaut. • Strong sense of community reinforced by shared visual elements (symmetry, triangles, crosses) and vocabularies (horror movie clichés, often), as well as musical similarities

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