review: SILK SAW's debut "Come Freely, Go Safely"

To begin with, Silk Saw were two guys from Belgium, Gabriel Severin and Marc Moedea. They would also produce material Under the name of Jardin D'Usure and Ultraphonist. While they have continued to release a multitude of records throughouot the years, their sound changed and morphed quite considerably, especially if you go back to their first release, "Come Freely, Go Safely"...

Silk Saw's debut album was released on Sub Rosa in 1996 during the "height" of independant beyond easy classifications underground, before the world became mad with a never ending series of meaningless categories and labels (like vapor witch or dark drazzle, or glitch doom, or whatever the fuck the kids are inventing these days). As I said before, sinve the release of this introductory full length album, they have often changed general sound directions, often making it almost unrecognizeable from this album. In fact, one would argue that this may be the closest to non-traditional "industrial" music they ever made, even if they never fell Under that category to begin with.

This album is rich with odd and weird rhythms, Strange filtered drum patterns and samples, audio tapes culled from various sources (which I shan't mention here for the moment, although once you hear them, they are immediately identifiable), repetitive permutations on a slow-building groove which can only be situated between deep electronic dub (before the "house" music infections) and a slow-motion groovy beat, all intertwined with various strange "bells and whistles" (proverbially of couorse), mixed with bits and segments of pure noise-sound-clashing, feedbacks and loops, ambient and drone-ish textures, etc. It is in fact hard to describe the general sound of the album without any audio help, which is why this is such a good album; it is somewhat beyond classification and is both intriguing and compelling, and deserves multiple re-listenings under various states of expériences. Fans of latter Silk Saw may not be able to get into this as they may feel the sound too "rigid" or "dated" (as many people feel that releases from this era have badly aged, something I myself do not adhere to), but I suggest it nonetheless.


I stumbled upon this album much like the "Osasto" EP by Panasonic: someone had left it for me at the CKUT radio station to listen to it, and I was immediately hooked. At first I made a special focus on the album during one of my broadcasts (intermixed and intertwined with other releases and materials to create an even denser and thicker soundscape) which was recorded on 1/4th tape, one of my better sets I may add. Later, I managed to score myself a copy of the CD for home use. While I am not all too keep on latter Silk Saw, I still find them very intriguing to say the least!

THEY LIVE: The video game!

Anyone who knows me knows I am a John Carpenter fan, and yes, that also means I am quite the fan of his 1988 outing "They Live", which has been getting more and more exposure over the last couple of years due to it's rather relevant and relevatory nature in today's post Y2K consumer society. Now I am not one of those who claim that "They Live" was about denouncing a specific creed or belief, but I do believe that the basic underlying theme of the film does represent quite adequately our roles as "cattle" to the less than 1% who control the world through corporations-governments-media.

Anyway a while ago I found this fake video game image someone made which mocks up the "Double Dragon" game from the 80s arcades into "They Live" with Nada and Frank, against the "elite" that only they can see. I thought it was quite well made and even though it has been online for quite some time, I thought I would re-share here on my blog, for kicks' sake. Below is a short clip from the film, the street preacher's mologue which pretty much sums up part of my philosophy ...




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Trip Avisor CENSORS reviews!

Yes, I just discovered that the world famous Trip Advisor website actually censors reviews! Now if it is their own board of management or management from the companies being reviewed which censor and take down reviews is uncertain, as it is impossible to get information on their website nor actually communicating with someone in the know (and their self-search guidelines sections are obviously designed to lose you in the process and then force you to give up when your searches yield no results and you keep getting the run-around in the forums and such).

But suffice it to say that they do take down and censor reviews. I believe it is by pressure from the companies being reviewed, as I saw that MANY reviews for a SPECIFIC company were now unavailable when a few weeks ago they appeared online. Of course in today's corporate controlled internet world, the ones with the money will indeed control everything, but it is a sad state when one can not voice their opinion and warn others on websites like Trip Advisor to get ready when they decide to try a company's service. I can't believe they censor reviews. What a shame!

review: Hilt "Journey To The Center Of The Bowl"

Way back when I used to listen to industrial-aggro-dust-etc, I was obviously trying to find anything and everything in terms of more material by some of my favorite artists, such as pre-"The Process" Skinny Puppy. One of the side project that Kevin and Dwayne had when not busy doing the Pups was a weird band which used to be called "The Flu" ages before it became more common knowledge as "Hilt". The story goes that the Nettwerk label dared Kevin and company that they couldn't produce an album for a micro-budget, so as Hilt they recorded their debut "Call The Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself)". To paraphrase Nicholas Marker (ex-DFS, ex-Holoskans, ex-Son Of Sky) at the time, he said that most Skinny Puppy side projects (such as Hilt and Download) sounded unfocused, as though it was Puppy material thrown in a blender.


Hilt's second album "Journey To The Center Of The Bowl" is marginally different than their first. Aside from a few rare stand-out songs, the whole of the album feels like a jumbled mess, where every track seems to be part of each other, and the entire thing essentially feels like some kind of a drug trip with varying degrees of success. There are moments when things feel very pleasant but in general, the album sounds more like someone's bad Inside joke to another, and as a listener, it feels as though we are being left out of the journey. The music does sound more garbbled than on their debut, and in the end one is left with the impression that without being under the influence of a specific mind altering substance, one simply can not follow Hilt's mostly abstract musings. Still, there is Something strangely and undeniably attractive about this album and it remains what it is and doesn't seem to have aged all that horribly, since it wasn't following any time-specific trends to begin with, save for late 80s/early 90s industrial amalgam without that Jourgensen metal guitar feel (although one does feel that grunge influence which was tainting everything of the era, before hip-hop did something similar aroun 1996). I often feel like saying Something like "listen at your own risk", but in the end the album is far from being abrassive; it simply is weirded out! In my opinion, there are no standout tracks but rather standout moments, and you have to listen to the whole to find out what workds best for you.

How come office idiots always overload you with work at the last minute?

Due to the fact that I work in a place where privacy and anonymity (amongst over things) do not exist and that they litteraly have spies looking all over social media and the interweb for any type of leaks, I can not open disclose who I work for nor what type of job I do but suffice it to say that even the biggest conglomerates with the best possible propaganda methods are filled with unbelievable idiots.

What I don't understand is that the people I work with are not supposed to be dumb. Sure, they are all your typical everyday commercial media absorbing self-centered vapid humanoid work drones but most of them are supposed to have an education. Anyway I do blame the Corporate re-programming and brain washing. These humans never learn that there is only one of me and that their last minute frantic "waking up at the end of the work week" ploy never worked, and still they keep on doing it: week after week, month after month, year after year. It is as if, and I don't necessarly mean to sound full of myself or totally narcissistic, but it does seem as though it all revolves around me. The best example is today: I took tomorrow (Friday) off because I need to take vacation days. So I adivsed everyone at the beginning of the week (monday, 4 days ago) that I would not be there on friday. Yesterday (wednesday) no one had anything urgent nor rush for me at all and I even had a moment or two where I litteraly had Nothing to do. I come in work today (thursday) and POW BAM BOOM, everyone and their mother fucking dog gave me last minute bullshit work to do, all due today! I mean seriously, what the mother fuck, people? Didn't you know yesterday you had all this shit to dump on me? Again, therapy dictates that I should not take all of this so personally but after years of this patttern always happening, it is very hard not to think that all of this bullshit is indeed centered around me. I doubt all these stupid fuckhead selfish morons are capable of properly managing their schedules, which is why they all seem to wake up only when I won't be there for the next day(s). So once again I can say it: STUPID HUMANS!   AAAAaarrrrrrrtggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck them all!

Arturia's Minibrute version 2? How did I miss this?

how did I miss this one? Back when I revamped my musical instruments, the Microbrute won over the Minibrute principally because of it's step sequencer function as opposed to an arpegiator on the mini one. However as much as I move being able to play a fully analogue keyboard and having great control over all parameter, the MIDI function has always been very unrelyable and to this day I haven't been able to change channel assignment or even to get it to sync with other MIDI devices. Essentially, it is now as impressive as originally anticipated due to having technical issues with the connectivity to a computer. Everything points to updating the firmware within the synth, but the supplied USB cable seems to not recognize the synth to the computer (and yes, I have tried other wires, and the laptop has issues trying to recognize the Microbrute, so changing settings and updating the firmware is still not happening).


I was looking online to figure out what the new Minibrute had in terms of an update/upgrade to it's predecessor, and found some info online, just in case anyone wants to know:


"... But a second look revealed that the MiniBrute 2 is not an upgrade to the original, but a different synthesizer. It has lost its predecessor’s sub-oscillator and gained a second oscillator, its filter and amplifier sections are different, and the original’s dual ADSR contour generators have been replaced by a single ADSR and what Arturia mistakenly call an AD but is actually an AR/ASR contour generator. Furthermore, there are no dedicated vibrato and control sections, and the arpeggiator is implemented differently. Then there’s its sequencer and the small matter of its physical patchbay. Oh yes... and the pitch-bend and modulation wheels are now correctly positioned to the left of the keyboard instead of behind it."


"The MiniBrute 2’s arpeggiator offers eight modes (including random and repeating modes), eight time divisions, five gate length settings, 11 swing settings, and hold, and experimentation shows that the maximum number of notes that can be arpeggiated is 16. However, there are no multi-octave modes. You can create multi-octave arpeggios by holding an existing pattern, selecting a new octave, and then adding notes, but it’s clunky and, compared with the original MiniBrute’s one-, two-, three- and four-octave options, it’s a significant backward step.


Its sequencer allows you to create and store up to eight monophonic sequences of up to 64 steps. It offers tap tempo, record, stop, and play/pause buttons together with knobs for the tempo, the time division applied to the selected clock source and, of course, which of the eight sequences you wish to select. For connectivity with the outside world, the Sequencer panel in the patchbay offers Clock and Reset inputs and Sync and Run outputs, with a range of clock options. "

great album covers: Capt Beefheart & his Magic Band "Safe As Milk"

Here's another example of a great album cover to a record I have not much interest in. Granted when I wanted to learn more about the good old captain (RIP) and his magic band beyond that of the now considered legendary "Trout Mask Replica", I dwelved into a coupld of albums they recorded and came out slightly more enriched, although also equally confused. Perhaps when they released their debut album, "Safe As Milk", they were also releasing their final "normal" album in the process, moving into much stranger and more challenging musical territory afterwards. In fact even their debut here as moments and elements slightly unconventional for the times, even though it was quite obvious the record label were trying to make an american version of the Stones. Now of course I attempted to understand and get into whatever it is that these guys were "into" but I came out simply more boggled than when I came in, and decided that like much of my own prefered musical tastes, it is an acquired one at that, and only for a certain type of audience of course. Anyway, I always had a little something for this album cover even if the whole fish eye lens is now considered an old gimmick to make stuff from the 60s and 70s seem more "trippy", but the general visual composition of the cover is something to enjoy - I myself would love to try to re-do / homage this cover for something I would produce. Below is the back cover, just for kicks' sake!

another "Hollywood" crush: Noomi Rapace

Like many people, I first came to see this Swedish actress in the Ridley Scott film "Prometheus", in which she gave a great performance. She then was spotted on a few other occasions, usually in mostly bit or small roles here and there, and I always thought she was quite fetching, which is quite Strange considering she decided not to go down the road of the "pretty for pretty's sake" which so many of her contemporaries do. In fact, Ms Rapace has no problems appearing in roles which do not showcase her at her best in terms of traditional Hollywood-esque définitions of "beauty" and instead focuses on the performance required. For example, in the 2019 Netflix film "Close", in which she has the central Spotlight role, she appears generally bruised up with many cuts across her face and body, and aside from one scene where she wears high heels, she is basically a true kick-ass machine who fights amongst the best of them. Plus, she insists on doing as much of her own stunt work as insurance policies allow, which means she is trully invested in her craft and deserves more recognition than she gets. Plus, as my wife pointed out, she does have that "Eastern European" air to her and I am the first to admit that I do have a soft (or is it hard?) spot for her.


Update: no wait, I actually first saw her in the Guy Ritchie film "Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows", and then in "Prometheus".

About album covers: the format determines the composition

I have mentionned already on a couple of recent occasions that I wanted to talk about french band Niagara and how their quick little blurb on an all-commercial music TV station made me realize what should be common knowledge concerning the designing of album covers, and that is what the title already mentionned: the format of the release will dictate the final composition of what the cover will be.

This was around the time of the early 90s when grunge was picking up quickly, electronic music was becoming quite passé, and an important shift in the music industry began taking shape: the death of vinyl records, the slight continuation of the cassette format, and the increasing dominance of the CD format for mass musical consumption. I recall an interview by french band Niagara who were promoting their latest LP "Religion", which offered a slight change in sound moving towards the escalating grunge/heavy guitar sound of the era. Anyway the interview was Nothing special since most questions were in reguards to the singer's look and dancing and whatnot, but at one point the subject came on the album art, to which multi-instrumentalist Daniel Chenevez starting saying that ever since the death of vinyl as we knew it, album cover design had to be adapted to now be seen on a format about 3 times smaller. He said that when one rumages through a record store (another dying institution), the Customer,s eyes now had to focus on a smaller format to grab the attention/to identify the product in question, and so the design of "Religion" 's front cover was made for CD and cassette release, as opposed to a 12x12 format of a vinyl record.


This was quite revealing to me as I had been designing cassette covers for quite a few years now and was at the time in the process of having to do a wider range of cassette runs and so album cover design for the cassette format (way before it became hip to release cassette, mind you) was Something I took seriously, especially considering the fold-out option and the cheapest means to come up with a fast way to "DIY" for fast and bulk production, which is why most Wreck Age cassettes starting around the 1996 up until about 2002 or so have a similar general design and that wide fold-out version (as displayed in the image below)

Of course when I was doing major cassette releases, the format was already become archaic, leaving the prefered one the CD, before vinyl became hip again. Anyway this isn't a post about me bitching againt the ever-chaging current of musical physical formats, but rather how it explains why the artform of visual designing an LP cover is pretty much dead now since for the most part (in most cases), most people only view "cover art" on a small cell phone tactile screen, and so there is no need to design an intricate beautiful piece of art for the 12x12 format anymore, which is a shame since record covers were a perfect medium to do art which was meant to accompany the audio contained within. So let's keep moving along here...

great album covers: Rolling Stones "Their Satanic Majestie's Request"

I think this one is a no-brainer from everyone across the spectrum. This was the times and this was the period which defined a generation indeed, and while Pink Floyd were piping at the gates of dawn and The Beatles were playing with Lonely Hearts club band, the Stones came up with their own brand of psychedelia in the form of my own favorite album of their's due to it being more "weird" and "experimental" than most of their recordings. What helped matters was the obviously "trippy" cover art which was originally released as a lenticular image. This album was yet another example of how album covers were designed for their format, because as you can imagine, reduced to the size of a thumbnail for a cell phone's touch screen, it looses all it's effectiveness. Remind me to talk about the french band Niagara at some point and how they helped me understand the concept of album cover art.

Anyway, I always thought this album's art was quite fetching and hypnotic at that as well, maybe not as Eternal as Sgt Pepper or other classics of the genre, but it speaks to me in a certain way and remains amongst my favorite Stones album covers. And yes, you know what I would do if I could score a dirt cheap LP version...

USB cassette capture to PC MP3 - U get what U pay for!

Recently I unearthed literally two boxes' Worth of good old 80s and 90s 1/4 inch cassettes and have started to go through them whenever time allows. However, time is a precious commodity which I really do not have enough of, and listening to these tapes at home on my tape decks through the sound system takes an incredibly long time. So I decided to try to buy a "portable" cassette player, Something you old timers like myself will recall we used to call "walkman". Boy did we ever use those old puppies up, didn't we? But long gone are the days of the semi-indestructable "Sony Sports" yellow waterproof walkmen, thanks to the culture industry's (and imperialist capitalism in general) annihilation of physical media in favor of the "Nothing" which is virtual disposeable non-formats. Anyway, the point being that unless you want to shell out some serious dough for a "vintage" true (but obviously used/not new)  walkman, your choices are quite limited. In my online searches in between work emergencies, I founf one such device which looked like I would do the basic job - essentially allowing me to listen to cassettes while at work (instead of commercially-polluted by ads streaming).

When I received this item in the mail (it cost me about $25 including shipping charges) I knew I had to make a review. Now maybe you guys don't know this about me, but I do think I may be the interweb's most censored person. The sheer amount of stuff I have put out there, only to be erased, deleted, taken down, rendered un-obtainable, is staggering to say the least, and the last bit wasn't even 2 days ago when a review I posted on EBay for this product was censored. No reason given,no warning either, just... erased/un-posted. To be honest this comes as no surprise since I am the web's most censored human being. Anyway, my review here and now is that this product is merely OK and will indeed do what it claims to do, but at a certain cost to sound quality. So if you are by any means a bit picky about the sound quality of your material, this will not do. In fact, I myself will still go down the route of either transfering my cassettes at home using proper tape decks onto either a CDr or in my Zoom R-8 digital recorder. I would certainly not use this little cassette machine to be used as main playback device to digitalize / "immortalize" all those unique one-of-a-kind cassettes. This tape machine is of very cheap construct, and I feel as though one drop on the floor, or stuck Inside a Pocket that is just a bit too tight will in fact break it. Although this may proove to be more than "adequate" for the casual person just wanting to transfer their old high school mix tape to MP3 for their iPod playback device, it can not be considered as a serious sound transfer unit. Yes I know my way is much more time consuming, but at least I know that in the end, I will be getting the best possible sound quality out of my gear as I can. Anyway, that's a bout it. Thanks again for the time you spent reading me rant about this product!

another great cover by S.R.G.: Netwerk Sound Sampler (compilation)

Like I said yesterday, there are just so many incredibly iconic and mesmerizing album covers designed by Steven R. Gilmour (SRG), and I had to showcase one which was quite evocative and in this case, representative. In fact I may go so far as to say (but I can not be held entirely accounteable as this is not information that is etched in stone or anything of the sort) that this album cover right here may possibly be the one which has influenced me the most and on which I pretty much "ripped-off" most of my own early album covers for the pre-Wreck Age Half-Trak cassettes (and maybe even earlier than that with the Tôme IV material). More below....

This compilation was meant to offer a glimpse into some of Netwerk's bands at the time, and it featured mostly "accoustic" bands on side A (except for an edited version of Tear Garden's "Ophélia" and Moev's better version of "Wanting", whereas side B featured their more electronic and industrial bands. Anyway, the album design is Something which I have always found myself very attracted to, and as I said, I often tried to copy the general design motif on my own album covers, except on real-sized cassette formats. And yes, this is another one of those that if I could find dirt cheap I would most deffinately frame and display somewhere.

great album covers: Severed Heads "Come Visit The Big Bigot"

How could I do great album covers without at least one nod to one of my favorite album cover artists of the 80s, the wonderful Steven R. Gilmour? He designed most of those earlier Netwerk label bands' covers, and most were quite striking in their own righ, and so many have become iconic and are permanently etched in our subconscious. Therefore trying to chose one was difficult, but I always returned to this one: the north american (re)release of Severed Heads' "The Big Bigot" (as "Come Visit The Big Bigot"). The main difference between the original autralian release and the north american release was the replacement of one song for another, and of course the cover artwork. I know what some may say; out of all the SRG (Steven R. Gilmour) covers I could have chosen, why this one in particular? Well as I said, all too many of this works from the mid-80s up until the early-mid-90s was incredible and deserved to be noticed, but this one spoke to me on several levels, principally the inclusion of a "Thunderbirds" still dummy/puppet as central figure on the cover, as well as the image texture itself which seems to be as though it was a photograph taken off of a TV set. I will admit the bomb design below the band name looks a bit thrown in there and out of place, but still, as a 12" vinyl record cover, this is another one I would hunt down for dirt cheap just to frame and display it. Oh hold on until tomorrow, I'll do another SRG cover for you...

great album covers: YAZOO "Upstairs At Eric's"

I guess we are going to play this game of "one album cover leads to another by association". This time around it is Vince Clark's post Depeche Mode band Yazoo which gets a nod to a great design, with the band's debut album "Upstairs At Eric's". I do believe that in the 80s we started to see the decline of trying to come up with decent and visually stimulating record covers, soon to pave the way towards what we began to see in this decade and moving towards the 90s and subsequently into the digital age where album covers would be literally the size of a thumbprint on a small tactile screen. In essence, album designs become adapted to the actual format on which they are released (I'll get to that later with french band Niagara). Anyway, although I am not a real fan of Yazoo at all, this album cover was another great looking concept which also beld into the back cover, Something the art designers of the time took care in doing, creating a follow-though with their artwork. It's a great album cover which had both 70s sensibilities as well as that emerging "Miami Vice" type of loose fitting opaque colors 80s.

great album covers: Depeche Mode "A Broken Frame" (& "Some Great Reward")

In my last great album covers post, I mentionned this album, and it reminded of the great visual motif Depeche Mode had with their earlier album covers and designs, from their debut with Vince Clark "Speak And Spell" up to "Music For The Masses". Visually speaking they were quite striking in terms of covers and one could immediately identify them strictly on their powerful visuals. Most of the albums up until "Violator" had amazing covers and I was hard to pick a favorite, so I included two contenders: their second LP (as a trio) "A Broken Frame", and their fourth LP "Some Great Reward".

I decided to include both because I really could not decide between the two as they both were just too darn close in terms of personnaly emotive. However in the end, "A Broken Frame" may have had that "0.05%" little almost invisible speck which made it just a bit more evocative than "Some Great Reward", which for all our present purpouses is an equally fantastic cover design. I think it is the lighting in "A Broken Frame" which seems more "natural" whereas "Some Great Reward" does seem to be more cold and mechanical in a way. Anyhow, I included both because they easily are amongst the better album covers out there.

Great album covers: 10CC "Deceptive Bends" (by Hipgnosis)

Let's get this right off the bat: I am NOT nor have ever been a fan of the bands 10CC. As a matter of fact I am certain I could only name you one song I know of them and that would be the limit of my knowledge of them, except that Godley & Cream left the band just before the release of this album, "Deceptive Bends". Although I am no fan of the band, the album cover is iconic and resonates with me. This version here is from a German edition of the album, and thus the background cover is a bit more "purple"/"mauve" than the usual "orange"/"tan-brown", but it could be an error in scanning. In any case...


I really think this is a wonderful album cover. Obviously one must attribute it to the wonderful art team known as Hipgnosis which consisted mainly of Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and then joined by a pre-Coil pre-Throbbing Gristel Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson. "Deceptive Bends" was an album quite important the remaining members of the band, and they really wanted to make it clear they could go on when two members left the band (a similar situation to Depeche Mode and their second album "A Broken Frame"... Hey, now there's a bunch of great album covers!). It's just a damn real nice album cover this one, and if I could ever find a dirt cheap but in good condition of the vinyl LP, I would actually put it in a frame and display it in my home or studio, surely to spark many people into thinking I was a 10CC fan... which I am not, of course. Seriously, I make it a point to try to listen to stuff which I would not normally do (I went through a few earlier albums by E.L.O. and Chicago for exxample, just to be able to form some kind of opinion), but 10CC really doesn't seem to appeal to any of my sensibilities. Although since I have included this one in my "great album covers" series, then I should at the very least attempt to listen to the album...