N. I. Mueller (born in 1982 in Sankt Georgen, Black Forest) grew up with portable cassette recorders and self-taught electric bass and guitar playing in local groups (1998 - 2003), when he first came into contact with fringe and underground musics, DIY ethos, free-form and improvisation. From 2004, he combined dabblings with signal processing on the computer (Propellerhead Reason, Audacity), field recordings (MiniDisc) and own experimental techniques on guitar and other conventional and modified instruments. Though digitally set in motion, this gradually allowed for an autodidactic approach to generating, abstracting and contextualising sound resembling hand-cranked and somewhat crude electroacoustic improvisation and composition, exchanging the computer for an evolving hardware-based live electronics set-up under the Ypsmael moniker since 2010. In parallel, he had worked 15 years for companies of various industries and sizes, for English and German polytechnics, as well as freelance, prior to joining Norbert Schnell's MusicDesign course at Furtwangen University (Germany), which he completed with an M.A. in 2021. 

First Ypsmael solo live shows combined audiovisual performance (sound collage with live sampling and visuals) at a finissage (Changing Spaces, 29 June 2010), followed by a shop display window exhibit (art brut/mixed media assemblage) as part of a group exhibition (Independents, 30 September to 14 October 2010). From then on he  focused on experimental sound (live electronics, textural music), starting with a performance as part of a line-up with Cluster's Dieter Moebius (Bad Timing concert series, 3 November 2010), in Cambridge, UK.

Since then, his solo projects and collaborations expanded to over 250 live appearances, including invitations to experimental/improvised music festivals and concert series in over ten European countries and four self-booked tours in the USA (selection in alphabetical order, from 2012 onward): Avant Garde a Clue, Rochester, USA (2025, forthcoming), Bonner Theaternacht, Bonn, Germany (2014), Canessa Gallery,  San Francisco, USA (2018), Center for Contemporary Culture and Community,  Indianapolis, USA (2012), Coaxial Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, USA (2018), Cornell University, Ithaca, USA (2013), Donauhallen, Donaueschingen, Germany (2020), Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany (2014), Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK  (2013), High Desert Soundings, Joshua Tree, USA (2018), Iklectic, London, UK (2016, 2023), SuperCoda, Brooklyn/New York City, USA (2013), Werkstatt für  Improvisierte Musik, Bern, Switzerland (2014), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2012),  ZKM Center for Art and Media (next_generation), Karlsruhe, Germany (2019). 

Performances have included shared line-ups and formative encounters with Dieter Moebius, Damo Suzuki, Phil Durrant / Tim Hodgkinson / Mark Wastell, Jack Wright / Roughhousing, Jeph Jerman, Michael Pisaro, Walter Wright, Id M Theft Able, Tomeka Reid, T.J. Borden, Nate Young, Karen Constance, Felix Kubin & Josephin Boettger, Tom Mudd, Michelle Lou / Go By Land, Rage Thrombones, Morgan Evans-Weiler and many more. 

In 2012, NM founded a concert series for improvised music under the project name MaeLyps in London and Cambridge, UK. At the end of 2016, he was a founding member of the Global Forest 2017 project group in Sankt Georgen, Germany. He was co-initiator and artistic director of Dual Session#1, a symposium for auditory culture at the German Phonomuseum, and a founding member of the Global Forest Kunstverein (arts association) and its Klangspiel concert series in 2018. In 2019, he was co-initiator and team member of the Reservoir Festival at the Linachtalsperre (Black Forest, Germany) and a founding member of Reservoir e.V. (arts association, now part of Global Forest e.V.). 

His work has been reviewed and presented in publications such as Bad Alchemy (Germany), Vital Weekly (Netherlands), The Sound Projector (UK), Adverse Effect (Poland), It's Psychedelic Baby! (Slovenia), Loop (Chile), Lost in a Sea of Sound (USA), Tabs Out (USA), Raised by Cassettes (USA), Disaster Amnesiac (USA), and others. NM received grants and commissions as a soloist/composer and artistic director, under various project names, from Werkstatt für Improvisierte Musik (short-term residency with two performances for WIM's Zentral-deZentral concert series, Bern, Switzerland, 2014), Global Forest Kunstverein (artist residency, St. Georgen, Germany, 2019), StiftungErlebnisKunst (maker workshop and performance for Global Forest, St. Georgen, Germany, 2019), STMWK (interdisciplinary performance and production in Munich, Germany, 2022-2023, published by Steep Gloss, UK, 2024), and Musikfonds (interdisciplinary performance and production for Reservoir Festival, Germany, 2023). 

Interdisciplinary collaborations include Simon Whetham, Ross Scott-Buccleuch (Diurnal Burdens), Bryan Day (Eloine), Stefan Krausen, Joel Penoan Collective, Dominik Irtenkauf and Faust's Hans-Joachim Irmler. Work by or with NM is released on CD, LP, Lathe Cut, cassette and digitally, available directly and via Chocolate Monk, Steep Gloss, scatterArchive and Longs Arm Artefacts in the UK; Public Eyesore / Eh?, Un Poco Fría (forthcoming), Tedium House and sPLeeNCoFFiN in the USA; Sonic Rubbish | KindlingEditions (forthcoming) in Australia; Tobira Records in Japan; Insitu Recordings in Indonesia; and Spalt-ung, eë editions (forthcoming), Klanggold.net, Consouling Sounds, Droning Earth or Soundindex.de in Europe. 

Since 2022, he works in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, as an academic staff member for research and masters programme development, responsible for Trossingen University of Music's Master of Music (MMus) in composition, offering pathways in AI music design, electroacoustic composition and instrumental/vocal composition. He was co-curator and co-moderator of the international symposia AI in Music: Agency, Performance, Production and Perception and Stakeholder perspectives from practitioners, industry and academia (HfM Trossingen, 2023 and 2025), as well as for workshops in the field of electroacoustic improvisation and group improvisation such as Peripheral Techne (HfM Trossingen / Latent Space, AI and Immersive Media Lab, VS-Schwenningen, Germany, 2024), and under his series Soundindex@DKollektiv (VEWA Espace de Création, Dudelange-Usines, Luxembourg, 2024). 

Among the award winners for the best production of the year at Hörspielwiese Festival (Kölner Stadtgarten, Cologne, 2022) featured his first short-format radio drama, Dein und mein Wald, conceived and realised under the SmaelyP moniker (text by Dominik Irtenkauf). An English-language version, as well as a sequel titled Dein und mein Meer (2025) were presented at Radiophrenia Festival (Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2023, and Civic House, Glasgow, 2025), as well as at On Air - On Site Festival (Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire The Hague, and Museo del Sonido, Santiago de Chile, 2025).