The self-proclaimed non-musician Bluermutt mixes a variety of things into one nice ratatouille or risotto of tracks that sound straightforward and laid back but actually aren’t. Funny vocal samples (“I am a lesbian, what do I have to do to prove this to you?” “Well, maybe if you kiss your girlfriend.” “Okay” Smooch. From “old school lesbians vs. the 21st century”.) mix with cubist bass lines and ever changing tinkering in the back and the front. Thanks for using water sounds on “Jimmy Coda” by the way, for some reason unknown to me, I like the sounds of natural water as from rivers, streams, drops and so on in experimental music and I am convinced, there should be more usage of these sounds. Far more. But that is just a personal side note, a bigger bunch of other things are also included here and there.

Rhythms change by accident and almost unnoticed (especially on “one body – no head”) and nothing ever really stands still on here. The music lends itself well to lightening up any room in the house, to housework just the same as to studying sessions. Bluermutt works with a compulsive drive, yet pours all the energy in mid-tempo tracks that range from club lounge to avant weirdness – in the same song at the same time simultanously sometimes. Most obvious are the samples about music making from hip hop artists during “self approach”, where talk about bars of rhythms and percussions used for producing tracks are then juxtaposed with a solo on an acoustic guitar. But also the bouncy, bitpart collected “fuckin’ Jimmy from here” is a wonderful, abstract electro track of laidback bleeps and beats.

On almost any track somebody is helping out with vocals, guitars, synths and even a slide guitar (Gianluca Pellegrino on the aforementioned “old school lesbians…”) which shows Bluermutts status as node in a network of Italian producers and musicians, also from his running of skyapnea and a bunch of other musical projects. This kind of multiplicity is mirrored in the music, or vice versa, who can say for sure. Maybe running on several multiple levels all at once is a way of live forming all aspects of Bluermutts day to day existence. Or “all my actions cause explosions”. But those are tiny, very relaxing and soothing explosions, nonetheless.

The interesting things are those that Nole Plastique left out, by circumlocuting basic songstructures, avoiding kitsch and working distorting effects into the single tracks, which, by the way, mostly flow into one another like stoned out trip through a second hand rarity records store. The fall onto a nice, laidback, “trippy” melody here and there, bang a little on the bongos, let all instruments fall into place at the right time in the right speed, to make you happy and feel light. Ease and beauty, just the way life should be. But the structural fundament of the mix makes for an interesting counterpart by destroying the harmony, by rippling through the mellowness like the evil tide of an undercurrent makes a perfect beach unfit for enjoying. It is nevertheless all songs, or treated as such, and that makes for another level of interesting structural theory all together.

Putting the alternatives not taken into the focus makes for a lot of interesting if-clause introspections. If Nole Plastique were settled at the West coast of the USA then they’d probably be mixed into the freak folk scene and would have released on Paw Tracks, but then they would be all washy and diffuse and the clear and crystal elements of their music would be missing. If they had a lot of money to spend on recording and were keen on exploring a melody to its end then they would probably be the next Flaming Lips, but then again those lose ends and ideas and melodies only hinted at are a fascinating part of their mix. Like the backwards vocals on “…rolled in slice” or the bongos I heard somehwere and the birdsounds I heard somehwere else. Atmospherically this is like Fennesz “Endless Summer” album time travelled thirty five years backwards to inspire Brian Wilson as he was stoned out somewhere on a beach fusing the vibe of certain damaged melodies.

Nole Plastique is currently the duo of Roman Kutnov and Alexei Belousov who have been helped out by a few people on this, their latest recording and first full length album, especially Nexsound label head and renowned Ukrainian noise avantgardist Andrey Kiritchenko. If you have heard them before then you might be surprised about the way the have taken, but then again maybe not, because their noise has always contained a high dose of harmony and romance. So this change is not as drastic as for instance the one of Accelera Deck, but still. Now they have let go of all the disharmonies and distortion they ever had, changed the percentages of "mixing, shaking and breaking" and present life as an endless stream of sunny days and softly flowing sounds.