Back in 2017, Minneapolis-raised artist Jeremy Nutzman emerged with his debut project, NCOD, released under the moniker Velvet Negroni. It was a sprawling and strangely beautiful sound, with vast electronics teeming with an ambitious experimentalism and forthright vocals, all unconfined by any specific genre. This sound was something which, at the time, Nutzman credited to his unusual upbringing: a Black kid adopted by a strict white evangelical Christian family, he’d had no access to secular music through his youth, and so his reference points to popular genres came much later. “I grew up with no freedom”, he says now, though as the years go on he is less and less certain on what impact his childhood has had on the work that he makes today.
Touchstones of left field electronic sounds meld with nods to alternative rock, power pop, even tender R&B and deft hip-hop are present on Bulli. Songs like the drolly titled ‘PopSong2’ judder and billow with piano and flickering percussion, all topped with his distinctive vocals, contrasting with intense, jarring bursts of sound as on ‘BellClapper’, recalling his more Dadaist roots. It’s a record that holds something anticipatory, at times almost frantic and manic, occasionally even sexy and breathy (as on the lithe bass of ‘Shiny’).
Stream / Purchase Bulli here.
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