Nestled among deliberately amateurish photos of blowjobs and hipster junkies at the Museo Universitario del Chopo was a cluster of photos entitled “Hidden Valley.” Ugly teens rode BMXs, fucked around with paintball guns, popped pills and smacked one another with a stick in a barren field between a parking lot and a housing development. Suddenly, in the middle of Mexico City, I was back at home in the suburban wastelands of the Midwest. I knew this “space of anarchy” well; not specifically of course, but generically, and absolutely. Away from parents, teachers and cops, Hidden Valley is the type of place you can experiment with adolescent stupidity as you futilely resist the first onset of Middle America ennui.

I think the wastoids in Salem know it too. They’re officially from Chicago, but I know better. White kids are rarely “from” Chicago. Instead, they’re usually refugees from crappy Midwestern suburbs and dying towns, desperately in search of culture but finding only public transit and better drugs. Salem’s music — a hazy, loping, lo-fi electro — fits that rudderless Rust Belt existence as guilelessly and artlessly as a glassy stare. I can’t say it’s good per se, but it speaks to me. And probably others — there are many of our breed, born under Reagan into a world where our destinies have already been mortgaged. Not “no future” in the cool Johnny Rotten rallying cry sense, but “no future” in that withdrawn, hopeless, Gummo type of way. Not sexy or cool. Not even sad. But maybe a little scary.

They’ve got a couple EPs and singles out, and enough buzz that later this month when their album drops, you’ll probably hear about it. The hype references My Bloody Valentine and DJ Screw — the only way we can talk about cultural products is like the pitchmen in Altman’s The Player, Cool Thing X + Cool Thing Y — but nothing they’ve put out so far approaches the sublimely hallucinogenic heights of either of those acts. Instead, what I hear most distinctly in the drag-tempo 808 beats, cheap synths, and dark druggy atmosphere is vintage Three-6-Mafia. Not their more commercial stylings since Memphis’s finest became the Motion Picture Academy’s token nod to hip hop. No, they made their best stuff when they were only releasing cassettes like the lo-fi masterpiece Smoked Out Loced Out: out-of-tune samples from horror movie scores, lumbering percussion, and chant-rapped lyrics about grisly murder bereft of any levity. I felt vindicated when I read an interview with Salem’s John Holland in BUTT magazine (oh yeah, they’re gay) in which he mentions Triple Six when asked about his favorite music.