Salem - What kind of music genre is this ?

Ooh - put me in the thread that says "Redlights" is really awesome

XP: Ha ha! Ok, sounds good.

NME Album Review: Salem - King Night (Iamsound)

More rewarding with each listen, 'King Night' is as characterised by its wisps of Southern hip-hop and celestial overtones

‘King Night’ is sick. Not just in the sense that it’s outstandingly good but in the fact that it seems extremely unwell. The skin of this album appears jaundiced, its flesh infused with thrush and lungs filling with liquid. John Holland, Heather Marlatt and Jack Donoghue, who have a murky past in hard drug abuse and prostitution, write about what they can see and how they feel refracted through the cracked prism of narcotics and sleep deprivation.

Those who’ve been following Salem for the last year or two will no doubt be initially wrong-footed by their debut, which is a lot more dense and monolithic than the ‘Yes I Smoke Crack’ and ‘Water’ EPs and their killer mixtapes. However it rewards constant and obsessive replaying. The old favourite ‘Redlights’ flickers into existence once again, but this time given extra creeping urgency. Jack Donoghue’s sickeningly chopped and screwed raps (‘Sick’, ‘Trapdoor’) are oppressive and threatening, and owe a debt to the cough syrup stumble of Southern hip-hop as well as the frantic beats of juke. Indeed it takes the angelic (but morally blank) vocals of Heather Marlatt (‘Frost’, ‘Traxx’) to help balance this out alongside a celestial sound recalling the screengaze of Ulrich Schnauss and the shoegaze of Cocteau Twins.

You can call this drag or witch house if you like but regardless of its genre tag this is monumental. As Professor Stephen Hawking said recently, God’s fingerprints cannot be found in creation. Philosophy is dead. We live as we die, with no control and little understanding suspended in a void near the dying ember of some cataclysmic accident we have no hope of comprehending. But look on the bright side: what a majestic vantage point we’ve been given. If, like Salem, you can see glitter and beauty in the chaos then you really should join them.

John Doran

9 out of 10

About 100 words was cut out of this which kind of makes the joke about existentialism at the end redundant, but other than that I stand by it...

Believe it or not I really like this record.

In fact, I think it makes a perfect sister album to the SWANS' My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky.

Which also has this total vibe of 'There's lots of awful shit happening round me which doesn't make any sense but the universe keeps on glittering away regardlessly'.

Some people here will cry sacrilege at that, John, but I agree with you. They're side by side on my top ten of 2010.

It's interesting because in the same way that I don't really like feckless hipster crackheads, I don't really like apocalyptically self-absorbed rape obsessed (former) junkies but I love both of these records.

No, please don't get me wrong, I love it too (and I like your review)

Ah right. Sorry. And thanks!

I wasn't just saying that shit about Prof. Hawking just because it happened to be on the front page of the paper that morning but I'd said that a lot of people use the word 'goth' or 'gothic' to describe this album but that personally I saw them as being exemplars of existentialism like Joy Division and not gothic like Sisters Of Mercy or The Cure or what have you.

Being gothic, imo, means being dramatic or melodramatic and either drinking or drugging to put you in another state you can report back from (The Cure 'Pornography') or just using literary or poetic license to dream all kinds of stuff up (Sisters Of Mercy 'Alice'). Joy Division on the other hand were, a lot of the time, just reporting on stuff. It's very undramatic in a lot of ways.

Now, I know Salem don't stand to be compared to JD on some levels but they do on others. (And in fact the final song on the album Killer sounds a little like JD or The Chameleons.)

It's still pompous as fuck right? But I hope it seems slightly less daft in that context...

Brief digression: I've never heard the Swans. Where should I start? With this new one?

I'm not saying this to pass the buck but there are people saying stone cold truth on the My Father thread.

Swans 'My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

SWANS have been away for about 13 years and the new album is, in a lot of respects, more like his Angels Of Light project but there are a lot of through lines as well.

In really rough terms they started out as a No Wave/industrial/noise group, then entered what a lot of people see as an imperial period and then split. The new album and previous stuff is all remarkably different from each other.

However, the new album... if you like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at their most apocalyptic I think you might like this.

Personally I'm not interested in authenticity too much but I'd apply the same gothic/realist or existentialist split between The Bad Seeds/SWANS. And there's something to be said for Michael Gira (main dude, visionary chap) and his sincerity. A lot of the SWANS stuff rings very true, and doesn't feel like melodrama.

I like that the last track on the album is a rip off When You Were Young by the Killers

Which? Salem or Swans? Because I can assure you with absolute certainty that M Gira has never heard The Killers

He prefers Brandon Flowers solo material.

Sorry, meant Salem.

Well, the clue's in the track title.

The first song is actually, 'O Holy Night' the hymn. Or an interpolation...

I remember years ago reviewing a Parts + Labor album for a small website and giving it a really good review.

― Duran (Doran), Thursday, September 23, 2010 4:14 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Stay Afraid and Mapmaker are so goddamn good, and no one fucking paid them the time of day.

As far as Salem's live mishaps, they're not forgivable, but they're certainly understandable. So many bands try to get their name out by performing live around town for a few years and then catching a break opening for a bigger band on a national tour. Salem was 'discovered' before they'd ever done a live show. From what they've told me, they've maybe played like two-dozen live shows ever.

The fact of the matter is, they still blow live because they're all pretty young and they do the majority of their recording on shit equipment in shit places. They have no experience. I don't know if this is common knowledge but the guy rapping in those videos also makes the beats, and until like a couple months ago, he was doing them all in GarageBand (!).

They may never figure out their live act, but if the album is good. What they are going to have big problems with is their next record. How do you reinvent yourself after you've created a genre?

American band, Salem, are all set to head over to the UK this November, for their first ever live UK shows. The trio will be here touring their debut album, the brilliant King Night, which is released on 27th September.

Tour Dates:

November
24 – London, Shoreditch Church
26 – Manchester, Islington Mill
27 – Leeds, Nation of Shopkeepers
29 – Nottingham, Bodega
30 – Bristol, Thekla

salem suxx, lol @ doran

http://i55.tinypic.com/6t2t7l.jpg

liked your review, doran. i want this disc (i'm sure their live show is as vile as those above say, and for that reason, i'm bypassing the youtube clips). your comment about swans is kind of pushing me in the direction of downloading that disc, too.

I've listened to a couple of the new Swans tracks and I don't hear the similarities at all. Unless it's another Swans I'm listening to.

No. I mean, they don't *sound* anything like each other but they have a very similar attitude in a weird kind of way. The similarities are very lateral to be honest. I think they both have a way of looking at very horrific, personal things and then finding something almost majestic or splendid in them. I don't think either band are gothic (play acting).

It's not a useful comparison, just an interesting one from my point of view.

hooray! a thread where whiney, deej, & j0rdan can all shit on goths!

(sorry Doran I didn't mean to call them/you goth. I'm not goth either.)

what does this have to do with goths?

if anything we're saying that some goths (three 6 mafia) make better music than other goths (salem)

3-6 is pretty awesome, but they the whole 4AD thing that Salem is also tapping into...I think they're still working out the ideas, but I really like Salem a lot.

'but they lack the whole 4AD thing'

http://i54.tinypic.com/qx54r9.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/mccgox.jpg

love this:

God’s fingerprints cannot be found in creation. Philosophy is dead. We live as we die, with no control and little understanding suspended in a void near the dying ember of some cataclysmic accident we have no hope of comprehending. But look on the bright side: what a majestic vantage point we’ve been given.

loved parts & labor, too. they may have gone unloved in the grand scheme, but they had their fans hereabouts.

lol @ this thread being

whiney shits on salem -> doran defends salem -> more people shit on salem -> doran defends salem and posts his nme review -> doran big ups parts + labor

this revive at least

i can't really imagine it going any other way

I didn't post my NME review. I've never posted one of my own reviews here. Actually I have in the metal end of year lists a few times but nowhere else.

And look up thread, there are about a million posters describing them as goth. And... *takes deep breath*... I don't think they're goth in the same way I don't think Joy Division or Swans are goth.

And if you don't get why I brought up Parts + Labor, I really can't help you. I mean it's such an easy, easy concept to grasp.

I also don't care if people call me a goth. I was a full-on mega goth when I was 15 in the mid 80s. I loved it for about 18 months. Until Fields Of The Nephelim turned up and I had a Damascene reconversion to being a common or garden long-hair.

I meant goth compared to, like, DJ Skrew, though I love the idea of 3-6 being goth...

Three Six Mafia are NWOBHM.

And if you don't get why I brought up Parts + Labor, I really can't help you. I mean it's such an easy, easy concept to grasp.

it's like the opposite of what miccio does to j0hn on every thread

lol @ this thrad

thread

it's like the opposite of what miccio does to j0hn on every thread

should probably just keep my trap shut, but for the record, I'm pretty sure I've only brought up a certain band twice on ILX. once when its singer was giving me shit for not liking an article by sfj he couldn't bother to read himself, once when the guy couldn't understand why everyone didn't share his "you must respect all megasuccessful songwriters" sentiment. and however impolitic or unnecessary it was to suggest how occupation could influence an argumentative stance (1st time was an annoyed, defensive gesture, the 2nd just a crack on everybody in the thread, don't plan on there being a 3rd), I really didn't say anything about the combo itself.

the chick in salem's cornrows look just like kenny fucking powers in the preview commercials for the new season of eastbound & down

http://i51.tinypic.com/2hfm2bm.gif

'cauldron-step'

Witch's Brew

A+

The release of the album has apparently been delayed to 4th October?

It's on iTunes now.