Tmymtur – 湧声 (yusei)
A wondrous thing. Rightly or wrongly I just have to feature this in [sic] Magazine. Somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to get my attention so it is only fair that we reciprocate.
But what the Hell is 湧声(yusei) ?
Let me set the scene for you. A beautiful package arrived at headquarters consisting of a promo disc, well-presented press release and a hand-typed, personalised letter to us, from Osaka, Japan. Even the envelope impressed me with the various stamps and customs chit, all that evocative Japanese lettering. Wow. The letter too was loaded with the modesty and dignity you associate with Japanese culture. So far, so good.
Then I read the press release and felt my optimism dropping away. This release apparently is a piece of ‘music’ consisting only of high frequency, layered vocals. 5000 layers to be precise. Many of these samples are at frequencies beyond the ability of the human ear. Can you Imagine what I was thinking at that point? Am I to sit through a disc of complete silence and then review it? It all felt a bit Emperor’s New Clothes.
Happily the disc isn’t just silence. However the bizarreness of the whole subject increased as I loaded it onto my player. iTunes recognised it as this:
Artist – The Pentecostal Mission
Title – 46 Sunday Morning Testimony – Pastor Ruthran
Genre – Religious
I kid you not. Honest to goodness, straight up. That’s what iTunes thinks I’ve got. So by now I am thinking ‘wind up’. Somebody is pulling my leg, surely? Not for the first time this year. (Stand up Arcade Fire and My Bloody Valentine . You may fool the others but you won’t fool me) And yet, isn’t it delicious! Somebody has gone to all that trouble – the beautiful packaging – from Osaka for heaven’s sake that I feel I have to let them have their moment. Even if it is a piss-take, it’s glorious.
So I press play. Wanna guess what I heard? Step up people. Place your bets.
Answer:
Not a Sunday sermon. Not 20 minutes of silence. In fact, it is genuine ambient music. 20 minutes of more or less a single note with distinct undulations behind. It’s real minimalist stuff. Very Zen. You could meditate to this I think. You could certainly relax to it. And that ‘note’ doesn’t sound choral or vocal in any way. It really is more like a synth line. It’s pretty actually.
By the end I am still not entirely sure whether I’m being teased but I prefer to think this is genuine music from a genuinely unique source. It may be, like the blurb says, “a project like no other” . Also, I cannot be sure, but my understanding from the various accompanying material is that this may only be a 20 min snippet and not the full ‘album’. I suppose I was supposed to reach out for the whole thing if I wanted it?.
Well, we won’t ask Mr Tmymtur to lose his time and money shipping another of his wonder packages. This can be the review I think and hopefully everyone can feel happy. I hope Tmymtur feels respected despite my notions of practical joking. There is every likelihood that this is a wonder album composed entirely of high frequency vocals which does exactly what it says on the tin, namely:
The microscopic particles were developed by myriads of voices
They make you feel the vitality as if lives are flowing over
And after a while, you will realise you are being covered by them
As if sinking into a deep psyche
Then, as if they correlate with the millions of flowing lives and nature in this world, reflecting and blending, we will eventually be touching the shared particles which connect us all.