Salem - King Night (Video) (2010)

Maybe some of you know this song and the whole genre that bears this sound...

I knew of the genre (Balam Acab seems to get lumped in there) but didn't pay it much mind until I stumbled across this song (and band and album and genre) that seems to garner a lot of confusion in the press. 

I haven't had a song smack me like this since the first time I heard Ministry's "Stigmata" or Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like A Hole" and sat spellbound by the videos.

I think it was the 'O Holy Night' (a highly meaningful song for me) thing that sucked me in. 

Considering that I find music in the sound of wires in the wind or in the recordings of shortwave radio transmissions and enjoy the musical collision styles of such artists as Bill Laswell and scratch DJs, it isn't a stretch for me to see the beauty going on in the midst of what seems like blithering chaos.

Not sure the song (or video) has any meaning at all but the end result is pretty remarkable (and apparently polarizing).  Genius?  Social commentary?  Apathy? Catharsis?  Or perhaps just a moment in pop culture in which the decomposition of meaning has found a temporary repose.

If anything, there seems to be an inertia behind it which comes from a place so overly sensitized that to be desensitized would be to feel something.  Boomkat's review is well worth reading.

I suppose it takes coming from a place like that to bring forth something like this.

Check it out...


SALEM - KING NIGHT from Theo Wenner on Vimeo.