Salem
King Night

I'm starting to believe I'm either masochistic or depressed, as when I listen to this kind of music, I immediately feel at ease. Even the two cheerful records that have become the fixed soundtrack of my summer ("Trouble" by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, which I've already reviewed, and the splendid "Thee Physical" by Pictureplane, which I might review), hide melancholy, nostalgia, or fetishism, morbid sides that come forth when you least expect it, ready to bite you. And then it arrives, in this suffocating heat, with this bustling of people abandoning the streets, finally leaving me alone, chained to my useless little town, to this intersection of empty roads and dust, whether due to lack of funds or desire, records like this "King Night" by SALEM reappear in my ears, a big question mark.

I have a terrible need for records like this from time to time: it's one of those albums proud of its own imperfection, but that manages to kill you softly, like an apocalyptic rustle, like an angel dying, like a violent earthquake. A record that builds its own limbo, piece by piece, daring where others wouldn't (who would ever try to dive into the incomprehensible and unnerving rap of "Trapdoor", at first listen unbearable, then increasingly pervasive), reaching peaks of absolute beauty (the ethereal "Redlights", the dark violence of "Asia"). 

You hit play and you're in hell. You lose focus, you lose the path. And everyone in the heart of the forest.

You look up and see skeletal branches everywhere. Damn ghosts. Diaphanous little girls. Monsters with huge jaws.

A record built on simple and effective intuitions: dated b-movie electronics, allure, dark voices, almost monotone. Everything so true to the genre it belongs to, the nascent witch-house, which generates artists upon artists, yet never so enjoyable, never so fascinating, never truly capable of materializing the sound of witches. "Frost" takes care of killing you, a great song. Where you find yourself, not even God knows.

Among these tracks, there's not even a shadow of hope.
I must be masochistic, I repeat, but how wonderful it is to get lost among these grooves. From time to time.