Its too exciting a prospect that Salem will be recording new material, fact.

When this is we do not know, but soon it will come, like impending nightfall when your stuck in the old cemetery in deepest, darkest Dunwich – its all about the fear of the unknown/that advancing noise in the cold black air? If you’ve even heard one song by Salem, you’ll know what we mean: Dubstep’s violent shadow, following malevolently through ruined city streets, slight rainfall, flickering street lamps, cobalt clouds glowing in the pitch dark skies; or maybe Suicide sex-changed and handed a load of grime records spliced with the more twisted elements of ‘Silent Shout’ by The Knife; or JME as a goth serial killer, listening to John Carpenter disco 12″ edits backwards at 33rpm.

Salem – Minemine

‘Minemine’ isn’t really that new, but it does show progression from the handful of onyx gems that have peppered both the myspace/myspace pages. Ethereal vocals echo through airless chambers underground as bass reverb from discos at ground level carry the synths through dark waters and onward to decaying stone formations. Here be the source of the vocal lamentations, a wounded girl flung to the stale grey ether, lost in the cycling tales of her past prime and subsequent dethroning at the hands of a false young man.

The extra elusive Salem 7″ ‘Yes I Smoke Crack’ should have crept to UK stores by now – start the hunt at Rough Trade or Pure Groove.

UPDATE: check out new video for ‘Dirt’ – gas-based suicide & boobs + wtf awesomeness = ART

What better way to accompany Salem’s depleting digital cloudscapes in timeless vacuums than with amphetamine-riddled fear and loathing in Cologne, Germany from Nico?

Soon after the release of ‘Nico: The Frozen Borderline 1968-1970′ last year, Robin wrote a frozen postcard warning of the horrors that came with falling too far into second solo LP, ‘The Marble Index’.

But if that LP was the sound of Nico hurtling through an abyss of despair and wretched cerebral violence, then 1974′s ‘The End’ was a collection of poems based on what she found at the bottom of the chasm – a crystalline network of inverted hanging gardens, mirroring all the evils that the brain can muster, and presenting them to her as darkly beautiful portraits of past events and buried emotions. Nico is now locked in her own plain, never to return.

‘It Has Not Taken Long’ rides in on the waves of an acidic ocean like a child’s nursery rhyme written by Lilith and ‘You Forgot To Answer’ careers through arid wastelands of heroin addiction with backing vocals by past victims of the drug. Armies of the dead are conjured on ‘We’ve Got The Gold’ to trudge through the countryside spreading arcs of skeletal fear. Nico even turns in a credible cover version of The Doors on the title track, casting the central American deserts favoured by Jim Morrison, in a frozen decay filled with murder and suicide lit by the red moonlight. But its only on ‘Innocent & Vain’ when she manages to punch through to an entirely alien realm, reality cascading to the ground as the sound of armageddon via solar flares melts away the air to create a doorway to unknown places – Nico reading from her diaries, the words working this magic:

Nico – Innocent & Vain

Are Excepter the techno Liars? Maybe Excepter are Liars, doing some wicker-tech-house on the side wearing man-suits to conceal they’re true identities, Buffalo Bill style – cos after all, theres only so much deep, dark forest prancing a fine fellow can take before the damning isolation drains any ounce of humanity from him and all he can do is coil himself into an angry spring and let rip a violent refrain on the next poor unsuspecting back-packer who stumbles a little too close to that supposedly deserted old shack on Mt. Heart Attack. Angus reads aloud from Black Hole backwards whilst the rest of the band chow down on the remains.

Excepter – Shots Ring

Shots ring, shots of rotten wood-peg bullets from the smoking wicker gun pieced together with hog spit and tree sap, brap! There is no escape from the night sweats that Excepter induce with nasty feedback alarm synths and patterns from drum machines that live in caves on islands located in the Bermuda Triangle.

Slapping you awake at the witching hour, a tall dark figure unfurls tales of demonic ideals into your ear, making you follow the far off echo of the screaming sacrifical females that plead for rescue. You reluctantly go whilst keeping an eye on the throbbing firelight on the swaying treeline.

Check Excepter’s new LP out on Paw Tracks soon. Kudos on the fetching American Apparel mint coloured album sleeve.

Now here is true horror.

I like to think that Kevin Ayers held a seance in a cosmic rebirth archway of crumbling bricks and mortar spinning through space just outside of the universe (where the dead are) to record Nico’s part for this after her bitterly sad passing. Thats probably not true, but its a nice idea and would explain the tense terror that this track has, it would make sense that it would have a real ghost on it.

Kevin Ayers & Nico – Irreversible Neural Damage

Kevin plucks the strings in a sinister spinning repetition while the organ sounds barely register as black whisps underneath. Then Death takes to the piano and lays his cold boney hands upon the keys. This ushers in the first demon, punching out from the top of Kevin’s skull as it mimics Kevin’s voice as if it were doomed to ricochet around slimy walls of graveyard tombs in darkest Paris for all eternity. Then Nico, the second demon, decends from a tear in the skies shrouded in antimatter, eyes blazing white with miasma spilling from her rasping throat. The birds fall dead from the sky. Trees and plants wither to dry blackened husks and die. Then it ends in an instant.