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!