Biography

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Early years and first live appearances

Born into a family of mechanics in Sankt Georgen, a small industrial town (Black Forest, Germany), NM grew up with portable cassette recorders and mostly self-taught electric bass/guitar dabblings during and after middle school (punk/noise rock and dub music, 1996 - 2001). Through encounters with local 60s psych/krautrock veterans and improvised jamming, DIY ethos and free-form music around 1999 onward (still pre-internet for NM), he developed an interest in experimenting with combinations of conventional and modified instruments, location recordings (MiniDisc) and digital audio (Reason, Audacity) while meandering between Bellingham (WA), Freiburg (DE), Cambridge (UK) and Stuttgart (DE) between 2002 and 2008. Although set in motion through on-a-budget learning offered by the portable computer, the latter still got replaced in 2011 by a Fostex cassette four-track gifted to him after moving back to England in 2009 – a first step toward building a hardware-based set-up as a main instrument, initially eschewing recording in favour of unpolished, live-only experimental performance, before gradually abandoning this and other constraints.

First solo appearances under the Ypsmael moniker took place in Cambridge, involving audiovisual performance (sound collage, live sampling and visuals) at a Changing Spaces finissage (29th June 2010) and a shop display window exhibit (art brut/mixed media assemblage) as part of a group exhibition titled Independents (30th September to 14th October 2010). Following an invite to play a solo set before Cluster's Dieter Moebius for the Bad Timing concert series (3rd November 2010), he focussed on live electronics and textural sound leading to a debut CDr titled Strom (Prods in the Dark, UK, 2012). Devising his own production approach still mirrored in later compositional work for radio plays (under SmaelyP) drew from his approach in Ypsmael, akin to electroacoustic improvisation as a form of solo and collaborative live performance. Such have since 2010 been characterised by deliberate risk-taking and vulnerability, incorporating malfunctioning electronic devices with varying degrees of instability, crafting crude, grainy, brittle and restraint contextualisations of abstract sounds at the "crossroad of ambient, industrial, lo-fi, and musique concrète" (Ypsmael's 'Torsion' 7" as described by critic Frans de Waard, 2024). In 2018, NM became a student of Norbert Schnell, completing an MA in MusicDesign at Furtwangen University in 2021. His work has since been cutting across boundaries of autodidact/trained, performing composer/improviser and researcher/producer at the margins of music and non-music.

Selected performances (alphabetically ordered, 2012 - 2025)

Avant Garde a Clue, Rochester, USA (2025), 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) and ZKM Center for Art and Media (next_generation), Karlsruhe, Germany (2019); with shared line-ups including Dieter Moebius, Damo Suzuki, Phil Durrant / Tim Hodgkinson / Mark Wastell, Jack Wright / Roughhousing, Jeph Jerman, Michael Pisaro, Walter Wright, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, Angela Sawyer, 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. 

Collaborations and affiliations

In 2012, NM founded a concert series for improvised music under the project 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.).  

For Trossingen University of Music's Master of Music Composition programme, with pathways in AI music design, electroacoustic composition and instrumental composition, he worked as an academic staff member in musicological research and masters degree programme development (Master of Music - Composition) from 2022 to 2025. He was co-curator and co-moderator of international symposia such as AI in Music: Agency, Performance, Production and Perception as well as 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), as well as under Soundindex@DKollektiv (VEWA Espace de Création, Dudelange-Usines, Luxembourg, 2024). 

Ongoing recording projects include Karen Constance, Diurnal Burdens, Simon Whetham, Bryan Day (Eloine), Stefan Krausen, Joel Penoan Collective, Dominik Irtenkauf and Faust's Hans-Joachim Irmler. Label releases are available on CD, LP, Lathe Cut, cassette and digitally and can be ordered directly and via Chocolate Monk, Steep Gloss, scatterArchive, Longs Arm Artefacts and Colliding Lines 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 eë editions, Spalt-ung, Klanggold, Consouling Sounds, Droning Earth or NM soundindex in Europe. 

Reception

On the fringes,  off-culture scenes and the international sub-underground, work by or including NM has consisted of performance and installation under varying monikers in around 250 contributions to experimental/improvised music festivals, concert series and other event formats in over ten European countries and the USA. Recordings received reviews in publications such as the Subsurface Soundings column in Offside Santa Fe (USA), 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's work received grants and commissions as a soloist/composer and artistic director under Ypsmael and other projects 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). 

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).