Teen Gothic

Artoffact Records is having a free download event for some albums released before 2024- these events are rare so thought I’d post it here.

Whatever local means to you: your hometown, your state, or your country. It's fine to provide a link to your own material. Just keep it goth. Thanks in advance. 🖤

Hey community,

I make my living as musician/producer/mix engineer, a position I consider myself very lucky to be in. Last year, I offered free mixing of one song to one artist on the shoegaze board that is in need, and I’m once again offering the same thing this year, but also posting this here to get more possible entrants.

Some goth or goth-influenced/adjacent artists I've done work for include Fearing, House of Harm, Tamaryn, Topographies, Cold Showers, Glaare, Second Still, The Harrow, The Sea at Midnight and more. I truly want this to be an altruistic gift and don't want any personal benefits from this, so I won't be posting links to my sites or anything, but if you want, DM me and I can send you examples so you know I'm for real.

To submit yourself for consideration, just reply to this thread with a little background info on your project/the song you want mixed (maybe a link to the demo if you’re comfortable sharing it, or you can just dm me). Please nobody who is on label that provides budget support, or who has the financial means to get songs mixed professionally already – I really want this to help an artist that otherwise could not have their music professionally mixed.

I will pick a winner December 24 (using a random lottery system, which I will post a video of) and I will deliver a final mix within two weeks of receiving the stems/project file.

I think that a lot of people truly downplay the impact of racism in the goth scene.

It's definitely there. If it's not evident by the fact that a lot of non-white people come into our subreddit and post questions like "is goth for white people only?" or "can I go to a goth event if I'm not white?", then I don't understand how much clearer I can make it for you.

Perhaps it's never even crossed your mind if you're a white person in the scene because it's just not something that you've ever had to consider.

As a POC goth myself, I've experienced some racism from the online community– after a few of my Instagram posts gained some traction, I received a comment from an individual stating "White people thing only, stop embarrassing yourself" in reference to the clothes and makeup that I was wearing. He then proceeded to call me a "dirty filthy black".

Not long before this, I stumbled on a comment about the goth subculture that stated "Maybe white people are so gatekeepy about the goth term because they have no ethnic culture". Time and time again, I've encountered plenty of people who either believe that goth is only for white people, forget that black people can also be goths, or legitimately ignore and exclude them altogether.

And can you blame them when a majority of our "goth icons" are pretty much all white? When you can listen to a popular goth song and hear a white man say the n-word? I mean, sure, you can talk about this idea that goth is supposed to be controversial, but I don't think that the point of "controversy" and "satire" are supposed to be about punching down. You're supposed to say "screw the man", not join the man in the same exact oppressive behavior.

If we want to encourage more POC to join this scene and we want them to stop asking questions about whether goth is race-related, maybe we should make more of an effort to make it blatantly obvious that POC are welcome and racists are actively shunned.

Our friend cancelled so we have an extra ticket.