Genre: Noise
Three untitled tracks
Generally, when I come face to face with a noise or ambient release, I tend to try it out while falling asleep, for it helps me get directly to the spirit of the recording. As one could easily imagine, I tried that with Panther Modern’s Salem. Although I did fall asleep, I had a very intriguing lucid dream while listening to Panther Modern’s genuine harsh noise, most likely caused by the eccentric sound wave arrangements and lack of tempo engraved onto that disc.
When I open my eyes into my dream, I am sinking in a dark and immeasurable body of water, apparently unable to move a limb to save myself from the certain death that awaits me. The icy, biting cold gnaws onto my skin as I fall lower and lower into this abysmal and obscure landscape. Everything in slow motion, the pain is nevertheless just as present. There is absolutely no color involved in the vision, simply the cold, pain, and airless feeling of being suffocated in an eternity of lonely suffering. The pain sometimes fades away, only to come back as an improvised rush of frozen water into your mind and through your soul.
As the second track enters with a calm and slightly creepy melody behind the everchanging noises, my dream starts to morph into another equally disturbing image. I am now lying down in a bed, surrounded by strangers, and, yet again, unable to move. Paralyzed in this awkward situation, I am being fed unlikely objects and substances, unable to grasp control over my body. My mind then drifts away as the melody is replaced by an infernal duel of noise-loops.
The third track sends my mind to wander, again as an inanimate corpse, in a series of giant waterfalls. I am floating to the surface of the river, only to fall a couple hundred meters and get ready for yet another free fall. The wind and water freezing my skin, and the sun is scorching it with its inevitable rays, destroying the remains of what once could’ve been.
Salem is not a brutally surprising release, but it is sufficiently original for your mind to hiccup. You can understand the thinking behind the track at several points, but as a listener, your mind shakes to the neverending lack of melody, giving you some sort of spiritual seizure as the waves of noise take your trembling body away. Panther Modern, hailing from New Jersey, have made it clear that Salem was meant to be a Satanic release. The back of the cover seems to imply that each track represents one of the “three types of ceremony incorporated in the practice of Satanic magic,” each of those corresponding “to a basic human emotion”.
Convert the infernal, claustrophobic visions to sounds, and you’ve got yourself Salem. Luckily for me, I woke up safe and sound from this traumatising set of nocturnal hallucinations. While the experience is not pleasant at all, it is an interesting one; interesting enough to start again. This album breeds a sonic masochist behavior in the listener. You better beware: next thing you know, you’re beating yourself up with a whip and begging for more.
