Salem - King Night

Already these bloody contemporary sub-genres are getting spliced together & remolded into new & interesting shapes. This album is oddly affecting & hard to pin down. In various parts equally indebted to new scenes such as chillwave & this sodding "witch house" whilst taking in epic 'n' ethereal shogazey textures, slow-stepping beats & astral synths very much like French dreampoppers M83 drench their songs in. This a powerfully produced album that fits in nicely with that dreamy stuff coming out on Tri Angle but there's something rather dark & sinister about tracks like 'Sick' that takes the monged-out hip-hop template that the likes of Hype Williams plays with and infuses it with a kind of Belgian New Beat stalker vibe. The mogadon rapping style dotted throughout fits really well with the saturated aural textures & sinister, brooding low-end which morphs slowly beneath the well considered beats & stunning atmospherics. I prefer it when the girl sings, her voice gliding over the songs in a dreamy, disembodied style, and when those spooked stentorian synths hit, you find them catapulting your mind into outer space even despite the mildly threatening undercurrent! Certain that this is one of those bi-polar albums that manages to be both incredibly dreamy & simultaneously terrifying. You'll not have heard anything quite like it, i'm looking forward to the split reactions from friends when I play them this crazy shit!!