By the first glance the choice of 'Pleasure' as theme for the rounding off of the Trilogy might seem a bit odd; compared to the notion of doom that lures in themes like 'desire' and 'pain', the choice of 'pleasure' as theme might seem as an open invitation to the avalanche of banalitites that overflow most popular music... Is it possible to deal responsibly with pleasure as theme for a Salem album without compromising or leaving entirely the path that was set on the first two records? The ambition of the third leg of the Trilogy, not only as an album in itself, but as the rounding off of an incredibly ambitions project displays itself in exactly this apparantly contradictory choise of theme. 'From the Riverbank' is nothing less than an attempt to westle with what the french philosopher Michel Foucault once called 'the use of pleasure', the basic notion being that pleasure is by no means a static, universal sensation shared by everyone. Quite contrary pleasure is always embedded in the nitty gritty of everyday life and hence always entirely dependant on social contexts. Through the music as a media the task became to trespass the boring moralities of the middle class and search for a wide array of different musical and lyrical landscapes in which varying notions of pleasure play a key role.

BACK TO BASICS (WITH A TWIST)
From the point of view of the production itself it seemed natural that the rounding off of the Trilogy should contain elements from each of the first two records. Behrens and Risbjerg also felt the challenge of not becoming too familiar with recording techniques and ways of orchestrating so that 'doing Salem' in itself became a cliche. Hence 'From the Riverbank' contains some of the most thoroughly worked through orchestrations Salem ever did alongside a series of very sketchy recordings. Furthermore the use of 'first takes' is applied vigourously, not least in relation to the lead vocal which, not everywhere, but in many passages is kept as an exact display of the first meeting between vocal and music. And finally Behrens and Risbjerg decided to keep the use of guest musicians to a minimum (as on the first record).