Ultra 64 / Tremor of the Black Manx — Blue / Doppler

Like much of the Jeshimoth label's output, this split between Ultra 64 and Tremor of the Black Manx, entitled "Blue / Doppler" is a specimen of heavy handed and ugly outsider art, a violently bizarre spectacle sure to get a strong reaction of some kind from just about any listener.  In blind pursuit of new but potentially useless dimensions of thought, these artists have forsaken all finesse, dynamic range, and compositional structure.

Ultra 64 half, entitled "Blue", comprises the first 24 tracks, which range from about 20 seconds to a minute and a half in length.  Each track is essentially a blaring, repetitious series of very high pitched frequency modulated glitch tones with very ugly and dissonant overtone structures, similar to the sounds made by telephones and modems, but a great deal more unpleasant on the ears.  The piercing and very digital tones sound as if they've been distorted through an overloaded cheap guitar amp.  It only lasts a little less than 14 minutes in total, but it's still quite the endurance test.  Ultra 64 thankfully eases up a little bit on the treble to bring in some drum machines in the second half of his set, and programs some crunchy blast beats not dissimilar to "cybergrind" bands like Agoraphobic Nosebleed for a meaner, more identifiably human sound.  One can't really listen to this as 'noise' is often listened to, since there is no pleasing fullness or bottom end to the sound, but it's undoubtedly some form of transcendent experience to have these tones, unlistenable by just about anyone's standards, unceremoniously shoved into your ears.

The music Tremor of the Black Manx offers up for "Doppler", by extreme contrast, is some kind of scatterbrained and weirdly amateurish sequencing of hopelessly cheesy unaccented General MIDI drum and guitar sounds, with no evidence of DSP or other sound sources.  Flurries of indecisive beats are punctuated by awkward and pointillistic 'guitar chords' in dissonant, odd-metered and non-repetitious structures, in which pacing and density fluctuates rapidly, and 5 to 10 second gaps of silence are common.  It could be a computer (and hearing) impaired technical death metal guitarist's first stab at IDM, a suburban 12 year old's label of love (I certainly achieved similarly sloppy results with MIDI when I was younger), or the intensely calculated work of an emotionally unrelatable autistic genius!  In any case, the compositions may be indecipherable, and indeed utterly fail at communicating whatever their intended message was supposed to be, but in fact it's neither unpleasant nor boring to listen to for the short duration it lasts.  If nothing else, it's a window into someone's daily mindset and budding artistic world, but this artist has yet to develop more than rudimentary control of most aspects of sound, at least judging by "Doppler".

For obvious reasons, this is a difficult CD to rate.  Fans of Jeshimoth, highly abrasive outsider art, or tripped out lo fi noisescapes may enjoy this, but even they would be likely to admit these sounds are emotionally inexpressive, unpleasant to listen to, and completely lacking in subtlety, while also not particularly sonically 'powerful' in the usual sense.  As always, I admire the relentless search for uniqueness that prompts such excursions, but will perhaps return to other Jeshimoth offerings with larger frequency than this one.