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Album Reviews
Album Review: Salem – King Night (IAMSOUND Records)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 8 September 2010
So, then, this is ‘witchhouse’. Having not heard any other bands that have been given this genre tag, I’m going to have to assume that they all sound like a vaguely threatening mix of early Wiley instrumentals, Fuck Buttons and DJ Screw. Salem’s stylistic influences on this, their debut full-length, makes for a muggy, oppressive, but rewarding listen. It’s dubstep by the way of goth, house made by people who never leave their own, a chopped and screwed noise record.
The band’s press release repeatedly mentions the fact that they hail from the American north west, surely as a way of highlighting just how much ‘King Night’ cribs from Southern hip hop. Tracks like ‘Trapdoor’ and ‘Tair’ are, presumably intentionally, reminiscent of numerous codeine sodden remixes by the late, great Houston, Texas based DJ Screw. Severely slowed down vocals bounce over a low-riding, slow-motion, candy-painted Cadillac of a beat. The whole album is damp with a uniquely Southern kind of humidity.
‘King Night’ is also clearly sonically indebted to dubstep’s lurching half-speed rhythms and the harsh, gloopy sonic palette of the finest UK grime. It’s an album that on the first few listens is confusing, labyrinthine, confused with what it wants to be (is that a rip-off of the vocal melody of ‘When You Were Young’ by The Killers on the closing track ‘Killers’?). It’s beguiling, inviting its listener to listen again, to listen harder. In time it uncoils itself. A friend of mine summed ‘King Night’ well: GABBAGABBAGABBA90seurohouseGABBAhiphopGABBAnoisepopGABBAGABBA. So there you have it. This is witchhouse. JAB.
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