Somewhere in the void between My Bloody Valentine, Burial, The Knife, Three Six Mafia, Mazzy Star, Flying Lotus, The Cocteau Twins and Prefuse 73 lies Salem. Whilst that might seem like a far too disparate list of artists to place a group in it's the best I can offer you. Salem make dark, distorted and disturbing pop music. Still sound a bit wrong? Well it is. Incorporating various genres (Shoegaze/Electronica/Goth/Instrumental hip-hop/dubstep) and mashing up terrifying waves of feedback, spooky snythesizers, delay effects, crunk beats and vocals digitally altered to sound like Satan himself they've created a sound that is wholly their own. "That's not pop music!" you scream. Well, lurking beneath the surface of the majority of their songs are very beautiful melodies, breathy vocals and solid song structures. So not pop music in any traditional sense, but it's there all the same.
New track OhK is, appropriately, the poppiest track they have unleashed upon the public. It shares more with disco than any of their previous numbers, with more regular and faster beats, a tangible bassline and (relatively) straightforward vocals. It's not dissimilar to semi-odd electronic popsters Telepathe, their closest musical contemporaries. It's very good too, and might gain them some exposure outside of Muso circles. Interestingly a previous single, Redlights, closed Sinden's recent Fabriclive, a long running CD mix series.
The Salem EP is available from all the usual places, including iTunes where it retails at a very bargainous 1.99 for 4 tracks. Check them out on myspace HERE, where there are a number or tracks in their player. Also, watch a frankly quite terrifying garage-cum-strip-club-cum-sci-fi-film video for their track Dirt below. If I had to sum Salem up in a sentence, I think it would be something like 'The wrongest, whitest, darkest hip-hop you've ever heard'. But I'm not sure that's even getting close...
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