* En anglais uniquement
Oft compared with gloomy breakbeat industrialists
Scorn and
Techno Animal, the dubbed up drum'n'bass of
Witchman has as much in common with jungle paranoids Nico and
Ed Rush and the gothic techno of
Disjecta and
Meat Beat Manifesto. Combining heavy, space-filling drum sequences -- alternately split- and double-time -- with piles and piles of effects units and daubs of ominous synth patches,
Witchman lies somewhere near the intersection of Jamaican dub, early hip-hop, ambient, and the darker side of bleep techno. The singular project of one
John Roome,
Witchman followed
Roome's stint as vocalist for
Terminal Power Company, an industrial metal band. A longtime devotee of
the Swans and
Dead Can Dance,
Roome stumbled onto a solo recording career by accident, assembling a demo on a whim before landing a contract some months later (his aspirations were originally in film). Early on,
Roome released more remix and compilation tracks than work out under his own name (he's remixed
Gary Numan and
Nefilim and been included on compilations for Rising High, Volume, and Virgin, among others). After a quick single for Blue Angel,
Roome's first EP, "The Shape of Rage" was released by the experimental Leaf label in early 1996, and quickly nailed an audience into jungle's darker, more abstract possibilities. After some record-label confusion (with Blue Angel parent-label Rising High in financial turmoil), he finally hooked up with Deviant in 1996 to release the Nightmare Alley double-EP, followed in 1997 by the full-length
Explorimenting Beats. The
Jammin' Unit collaboration
Inferno appeared in 1998 on Invisible. ~ Sean Cooper