Salem research

In 2008, Heather Marlatt, John Holland, and Jack Donoghue established Salem. King Night, Salem's debut studio album, was released in 2010. AllMusic, DIY, NME, The Quietus, and Stereogum all listed it among their year-end selections.

With no new releases since their 2011 EP I'm Still in the Night, Salem had not been active since 2012. Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans revealed details of a new album from Salem in 2016, confirming the announcement on his Instagram account. For his Device Control EP, Salem added a remix of Tillmans' "Make It Up as You Go Along" in the year he made his official comeback. But it wasn't until May 2020—during Salem's debut of a brand-new mixtape called Stay Down—that the band was able to come back to life on NTS Radio. The band's rebirth took place without Heather Marlatt, who publicly criticised the circumstances and claimed she had been fired.

On September 18, 2020, Salem's first single in almost ten years, "Starfall," was made available through Mad Decent's Decent Distribution. The band's journey with seasoned storm trackers through Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dallas, and Texas during tornado season is chronicled in the music video. Donoghue and Holland directed it alongside Tommy Malekoff. The song was described as "a signal of additional work to come" in a press release. On October 30, 2020, their second album, Fires in Heaven, was released, marking ten years since their debut. On October 16, a new single called "Red River" was released along with its pre-order.

My view on the band

This band has been on my radar for years but I haven't really gotten into their work until about a couple of months ago when I saw a video on the context of the band. In an instant I wanted to find out every piece of information I could find on this band, but there wasn't much to go on so I was left like many other fans of them, wanting more.

The genre 'Witch House' has been a genre that I have been encapsulated by for years. With bands like 'Crystal Castles',' Crim3s' and many others hoarding my iTunes library on my 16 GB iPhone 5. As a young child just getting into music, these songs were completely foreign to a kid who has been conditioned to commercialise pop songs churned out on the radio 24/7. Fair to say I was hooked.

The band Salem however was considered a pioneer of this genre, but I had never gotten into them because the naive 13-year-old me thought their music was shit. I had moved out of an electronic music phase later on and more into rap, but recently with high profile rappers like 'Lil Uzi-Vert' collaborating with new acts like 'Snow Strippers' urged me back into this phase. For the past 3 months or so I have really been influenced by the images ex-dominatrix turned Hollywood star, Julia Fox had taken of the band in her photography book 'PTSD' alongside the images of band members, Jack Donahue and John Holland posted on their personal Instagrams. This includes midwestern themes sometimes but it's mostly random images that the duo found compelling, I must assume.

Research

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