(2010 Mar 8) The Guardian publishes 'Scene and heard: Drag'

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(2010 Mar 8) The Guardian publishes 'Scene and heard: Drag'

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/music ... heard-drag
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Scene and heard: Drag
Inspired by hip-hop's screwed brigade, drag's heavy atmospherics and tormented outlook are pure musical entropy
by Scott Wright
Mon 8 Mar 2010 13.04 GMT

When Salem first stepped from the shadows in late 2007, people had fun describing their creepy and creeping sound: screwgaze, cave crunk, ghost juke and crimsonwave were just a few of the proposed monikers. Now, as a herd of imitators (White Ring), admirers (Fostercare) and like-minded lost souls (Balam Acab and oOoOO) haul themselves into the murky, flickering spotlight, Salem themselves have come up with the best genre name of all: drag.

A short but deceptively complicated word, it expresses so much of what makes their music vital: its tormented protraction, sexual ambiguity, the heavy burden it seems to carry. The trio also like to smoke a lot on stage. Heather Marlatt from the band explains. "Our music is not like some other types where the energy is back and forth – music considered drag is like giving up oneself, to be pulled and controlled," she says. "We also use it to describe music that has been slowed down or 'screwed'."

One of this new sound's most obvious influences is a form of late 90s hip-hop pioneered by Houston's DJ Screw, who pitched down rap songs so dramatically they became hazy and sinister – not so much remixes as long, twisted shadows cast by the songs themselves. The form was later explored by Berlin-based art collective AIDS-3D, who "screwed" Eurodance hits, making monsters of songs like Rhythm Is a Dancer and Renegade Master. Salem first deployed the term drag on a number of screwed-style remixes, most notably a version of Skeeter Davis's 1963 country hit The End of the World, which in their hands becomes pregnant with impossible pain.

Salem signed to the pioneering Acephale Records, and among the first to discover their dark charms was eclectic Brighton-based music blog 20 Jazz Funk Greats (XXJFG). One of their number, Robin Carolan, has helped track the scene's evolution, and with his newly launched record label Tri Angle looks set to have a hand in its future development. He described the sound's appeal to me in typically verbose fashion. "It's like a witching-hour vision of Cocteau Twins dream pop, meshed with the soundtrack to a particularly angsty Gregg Araki film full of Gen X shoegazer atmospherics and industrial beats, brought bang up to the date by the influence of raw hip hop mutations like chopped and screwed and juke." Tri Angle will release music by some of the fledgling scene's more interesting new acts: the haunted Balam Acab and the eerie oOoOO, as well as exploring the bizarre and varied terrain that has become XXJFG's home.

The scene that Salem spawned has developed a distinctly dislocated worldview. "There's an interest in superstition and the occult, but filtered through the very modern mindset of individuals who have grown up glued to the internet," says Carolan. "It adds to the feeling of isolation, melancholy and loneliness." That perspective has helped forge a strong visual identity (aided in part by artists like Terence Koh) that echoes the sound's darker notes, as well as its bone-dry humour. "There's a lot of re-contextualisation of religious and mythical symbolism," says Carolan. "They are obsessing over how they can create their own version of the hexagram as an emoticon."

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