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

Joseph PentangeloCUNY Graduate Center

RationaleMusicians frequently alter their orthographies for two main reasons:1. to set themselves apart (from the mainstream or their peers)2. to foster a sense of community among bands who share a given orthographic

feature

• 1960s+: Intentional misspelling - sets apartBeatles, DJ Kool Herc, Weezer

• 1969+: Heavy Metal Umlaut - communityBlue Öyster Cult, Mötley Crüe, Queensrÿche

• 1980s+: Non-alphabetic signs - sets apartPrince’s symbol, !!!, SunnO))))

• 2010s: Witch House - sets apart AND creates community†GR VEL†, Ω Ω , G Z▲ ╪ △ △

Typology

Two types of glyphs:1. Accessible on standard keyboard; alphanumeric plus

punctuation (Common)2. Inaccessible on standard keyboard; symbols (Arcane)

Three types of usages:3. Decorative4. Allographic5. Symbolic (Ideographic or logographic)

Genre TableCommon Arcane

Decorative Punk, Metal, Hip-Hop, Pop Witch House

Allographic Electronic, Witch House, Hip-Hop, Pop

Witch House

Symbolic Electronic, Witch House, Indie

Witch House, Indie

• 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

Metal Umlauts

• No impact on pronunciation.

• 1969 – Amon Düül II• 1970 – Blue Öyster Cult

for the “Wagnerian aspect” of Metal.

• 1970 – Black Sabbath’s single Paranoid spelled Paranoïd for purely decorative reasons.

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.

Metal Umlauts

• Used by many prominent Metal bands, including Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, and Queensrÿche

• Parodied by Spinal Tapand, later, oẗu .G̈�r̈ � s̈�

• Fell out of fashion, late ‘80s.• Now used by Punk and

Grindcore bands aswell (Assück, Leftöver Crack), and occasionally inHip-Hop (Jaÿ-Z, Dälek)

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.

SunnO)))

• Drone Metal• Named for an amplifier

brand• “Sun”

Popular Music• 1971 – Led Zeppelin’s 4th album

1983 – Freur 1993 - Prince

• P!nk• Ke$ha• A*Teens• *NSYNC• DeadMau5• ?uestlove• A$AP Rocky

2000s+ Popular Music and Hip-Hop

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.

Indie

• ∆ (Alt-J, for the Apple keyboard combination to type it)

• The xx (Which people thought for a long while was called Dos Equis or The Exes)

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.

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 chk chk chk

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)

Triangle in the Occult

• “The threefold nature of the universe…the mystic number three…the spiritual world.” (Cooper 1978)

• Crowley, Pyramids, Illuminati, etc.

M∆S C∆RA ▴

• More triangles, here used as allographs of <A> and decoratively

• Visual symmetry (more or less)

• 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!)

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)

“Ritualzzz” and “Crosses”

• Glyphs are inconsistent: † may be T or I; ∆ may be A or D; †, ∆, Λ and , may be used as both ▲allographs and symbols, sometimes within the same name.

• Gr†ll Gr†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)

Other Witch House Names:

oOoOOxixᄼᄽᄾ

◊ ℑ⊇ ⊆ℜ

• Many Witch House groups are impossible to search for.

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.

Witch House

• ◊ ℑ⊇ ⊆ℜ on 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.”

• Λ on 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.”

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)

• 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

Witch House