Audio By Carbonatix
A feeling of terror dominates Modern Witch’s latest release, Unknown Domain, in a way that sonically captures what it must be like to watch the avant-art duo of Mario Zoots and Kristy Foom at work as collage artists. Their shared eyes and ears fashion tracks like “Hollywood Babylon” and “Julia Roberts” as Foom’s ghostly minor-key wails are layered with slow-motion interview clips bubbled up from YouTube archival oblivion. Zoots pastes together synthetic sounds, creating the right muted, skeletal backdrop for Foom’s verses about teenagers and drab pop culture to tiptoe around. Sure, there’s a plain likeness to the Knife, Broadcast and Glass Candy, but the group’s ability to pull from the ’90s television drains of Donahue and A Current Affair and re-create the same kind of creepy celebrity and subculture clash is what makes Modern Witch better than any witch house afterthought.
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