SALEM - King Knight (IAMSOUND)

The advent of Salem as a "buzzband" is less a story about a band, and more of a commentary on the relentlessness and restlessness of music bloggers. Anyone who has ever read an interview, or viewed a live performance realize that Salem really don't give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks about their music - they are making it for themselves and themselves alone, and if you want to come along for the ride, or the "drag," then so be it, but don't expect them to tailor anything toward your trend-hopping ass. They didn't set out to create a genre, they didn't set out to make for a movement, but that is just what they did, through no fault of their own. How this happened has nothing to do with the band's intentions and everything to do with the frenzy by which bloggers attack anything new and slightly original. The band combines various forms of electronic music, dance and hip-hop to come up with something that resembles a rave on ambien. It is original? Kind of - in that no one else really sounds like this, but a close listen will reveal every single element derivative of something else. Be it goth or crunk, it's in there and apparent. The fact that the band combined all of these elements under one roof and made it sound, for the most part, pretty damn good had bloggers scrambling to digest, categorize and name this new, somewhat different sound, thereby creating a pigeonhole where one did not exist before.

A cursory review of attempts to capture and contain Salem's music reveal such reviled terms as "witch-house" "haunted-house" "drag" (my favorite because it is derived from a maligned and misunderstood quote from an interview with member Jack Donoghue, showing how desperate some were to categorize this music) and finally the infamous "rape gaze" (another favorite because following the fall-out that accompanied the overeager use of this term by Pitchfork in their review of "King Night" they quickly retracted it, thankfully Hipster Runoff has decided to not let them forget it). All of these descriptors bespeak of a ravenous music press vying for a shot at becoming the next Simon Reynolds (who infamously coined the term "post-rock" in his review of Bark Psychosis' "Hex" album, thus helping to shape and define a new kind of sound) by coming up with a name that in essence forces the creation of a whole new musical genre, regardless of whether or not that genre actually exists outside of the context of that name. So Salem is "witch house" "haunted house" "drag" and/or "rape gaze" all because some music writer somewhere wanted to be the first to bag and tag a sound that sort of kind of sounds different from anything else, but ultimately not really.

Once the genre was named, the descriptors started flying; "scary" "terrifying" "dark" "bleak." If you didn't know better, you would think Salem were a doom or black metal band, not a dance-oriented electro act that really isn't any of those things. And what do Salem think about all this rush for judgment, this baseless hyperbole, this embarrassingly overwrought analysis? They could clearly give a fuck care less. Like I said, they just want to make music they like, and if you like it; fine, but you don't really have to. It's really no big deal to them either way. They didn't create this beast, we did with our incessant need to hype, consume and categorize. Once you get past the idea of Salem as a "buzzband" and the baseless stupid attempts to create a genre out of their sound, Salem are actually not half bad. I kind of like what these guys and girl are doing for themselves.

Semi-born out of a sordid history of drug abuse and prostitution, the Chicago/Michigan trio create a dense electronic sound that is sometimes gritty and sometimes beautiful, and often a mixture of both. Take the album's title track; it sounds like a dirty slowed down UK garage single but is quickly elevated by bubbling synths and a tweaked choral rendering of "O Holy Night." It's massive and absurd and cool all at the same time. "Asia" follows and sounds even larger, with gently soaring distorted synths and ethereal vocals over quasi-military drums mixed with a simple industrial beat. It's even more absurd, maybe even outright stupid, and yet if you let it, it will move you. This dichotomy of high and low art is what makes Salem work. Throughout the band's debut they seamlessly mix the sublime with the grime, crafting layers upon layers of sound to make for their own unique take on electronic dance, and even though each element has been done somewhere by someone else before, it hasn't been mashed together into a cloth sack like this before.

Occasionally Salem slips into affectation as on "Sick" "Trapdoor" and "Tair," a smattering of 'chopped and screwed' hip-hop tracks that quickly wear out their welcome. Each song interrupts the album's momentum to some degree and detract from what, at times, is a pretty powerful release overall. The band is better suited toward the cathedral-sized ambient dance of "Redlights" and the goth-driven coldwave of "Hound" and "Killer" than they are DJ Screw. But whatever, they seem to have an affection for it, and this isn't music for me, it's music for them. I just can't remain on their codeine-inflected hip-hop hayride for too long. It's the point where I have to fast forward to the next bliss-inducing track full of sheets of synthesizers and angelic vocals.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that regardless of what has been written about Salem, their music isn't the least bit scary, so don't believe that hype. If you want scary contact me and I'll set you up with scary. If this is "witch-house" then we must be talking about Glenda the Good Witch and not witches at black masses.

Will "King Knight" sound good in two years? I don't know. I think it will. Ultimately, I don't really care, nor do Salem probably. Right now, though, this is sounding pretty damn cool and comforting, and it is ripe with harbingers of the band's potential. They could go in many directions from here both mundane and amazing. This isn't to say that they haven't already created some great music, because they have, it is just to say that unlike most bands, Salem sounds like they could be something extraordinarily special and important, or drop off the map after a year.

"Asia"

SALEM - ASIA from SALEM on Vimeo.

"Hound"