Convergence

It has happened:

Lil B, one of the most insanely prolific rappers since Weezy circa No Ceilings, has released a song sampling Salem. The flow itself is NOT good...at all...but the Based God remains important, if only for his completely no-holds-barred approach to assimilating music into his own...thing.

This is IMPORTANT because it's proof Lil B is racist   syrup sound coming full-circle. It's just not good. We still have to mark the calendar though. 

Slumming with Salem?

So... Jack Donahue of SALEM apparently got snuggly with Courtney Love of COURTNEY FUCKING LOVE (and Hole*) and took some macbook photobooth pics to mark the occasion... or are they cell phone pix...the point is, Hipster Runoff had to make what was an embarassing moment (for C. Love) some kind of sensationalized... something?  And then they threw around the term Rape Gaze ("Did u hop off the chillwave, and r u vibing the rape gaze?") like it's...well like it hadn't been redacted from the Pitchfork review of King Night.

Further reasons I hate hipster runoff...besides its contribution to general illiteracy and the cheapening of everything that could possibly be cool or creative or different... They took something that should have been 5 seconds of a funny/sad twitpic had to bring up "Rape Gaze" again like it's actually a thing. A thing that's interesting or worth discussing at this point.

Here's what's fucking interesting: "Rape Gaze" was coined by Lauren Flax & Lauren Dillard, of Creep, an all-female band...and they've disowned it because, as they explain to the Village Voice:  "We would never want to advocate sexual violence against any human being. It was a play on words which we never expected to be used as an actual genre." 

Their first gig was with MEN... wrap your head around that one, Carles.

*Russ may have mentioned this band, Hole, to a young associate of his who was unable to name a single Hole song. Ah...youth of today.

Update on Oct 26, 2010 by Marley

I love how http://fuckyeahcourtneylove.tumblr.com has picked up the "story"...and they're disappointed in C Love. COSIGN.

Turning things around: the SALEM controversy

Updated on Oct 8, 2010 by Marley

Updated on Oct 8, 2010 by Marley

Updated on Oct 8, 2010 by Russ

Updated on Oct 8, 2010 by Russ

Now that Salem's  KING NIGHT is actually out, we at soldout (AKA the salem-superfan-superfascination site) are enjoying mainstream reviws of the album. Naturally, more than one have noted the interesting mix of musical styles that Salem blend--shoegaze, rap, drone, pop, screw, crunk--and we have to nod to Pitchfork for making a Werewolf Bar Mitzvah comparison, to our surprise, instead of commending the group for bridging the gaps between these vastly different styles some reviwers have taken to suggesting that the group's intents were based on racial appropriation. While we're open to hearing everyone else's opinion on our favorite trainwreck of a musical group, we're not so sure what to think of reviwers who so casually throw around terms like, racist and minstrelsy.

To wit: the esteemed twitter music critic 1000timesyes  aka Chris Weingarten vs our own Dr Z 

Those terms are heavy, loaded and easy--or, to put it much more casually, them's fightin' words. But maybe it is we who are missing something? For us, t's not a black and white issue (pun... indented).  So the soldoutmusic.com members who are online at 11 AM on a Friday (read as: Liz Raftery is innocent in all this) are discussing...and we hope you'll join in.  Note: this conversation is UNEDITED. 

Kristin: Wow. I'm really surprised by that well-written and thoughtful review. I guess it takes more than 140 characters to do that kind of thinking!

Click to read more ...

Like a nun

A SALEM jam we at team soldout hadn't yet heard hit the group's myspace:

SALEM: IMASHEET

(right click and save as)

Coming on like a hybrid of Jack + John, a slurred-up slowed-down beast threatens to strangle you before...holy shit...Jack makes a pun: "I'm just trying to sport a habit like a nun".  

This, of course, in the same song in which he growls "my hands by your throat/I don't leave a note". So, of course, when I say this is a "SALEM jam" you know that means "homicide hot track". 

KING NIGHT can't come soon enough. And we mean that.

King Night

Sometimes at soldout we write about SALEM (or Salem, or S4LEM). Remember when we asked them if they were going to do a full-length?

Click to read more ...