INFLUENCE: Ritualz (†‡†) and witch house music
I listen to quite a bit of witch house, which is a strange subgenre of music that was bought to my attention in 2010, I think. Warren Ellis posted about it, linked to some videos and stuff, and it became a strange sort of fascination to me that this group of artists existed who made spooky electronic music with a slight hip hop influence, and they liked to put strange characters in their names to make themselves difficult to find via Google. Their albums are largely limited editions, they’ll throw up mixtapes and then pull them down a week later, they’ll jump from one music service to the next. Being a witch house fan involves doing a little bit of work, and that’s part of what makes it interesting.
Ritualz, known originally just as †‡†, is one of the first artists I grabbed onto back then, and I think one of the best. I consider his album Ghetto Ass Witch the best album of 2011, though I should also point out that I don’t listen to a whole lot of new music. I mean, the only albums I’ve bought this year so far are 90’s punk and rap albums, if that tells you anything.
I decided, early into working on the comic, that Ninel would be a bit of a witch house fan. This is part of the background I developed for her that I don’t really get into in the comic much, aside from dropping little hints here and there. I wanted to give her a backstory to understand her better as a character when writing her, to make it easier to learn what decisions she makes, how she dresses and behaves, et cetera. Being into Ritualz is just a taste of who she was before she got the tank and started to change.
…And now you know where the †‡† symbol on Ninel’s shirt comes from in chapter 1.
Another witch house artist I recommend is ✝ DE△D VIRGIN ✝ and I think Silver Strain are pretty good too. And Salem’s track I’m Still in the Night is possibly the best witch house track ever.
[Brett]
Other Sleep 
I really love this genre and just happened to stumble across it. I’m really digging bands like White Ring, the synthetic dream foundation, zola jesus, Ritualz, oOoOO, etc. Thanks for the post!