Watercolour gets a tough rap – how many cred artists can you name who use them? I’ve always had a weakness for those watery shades – you’ve only got one chance to make it look right (no overpainting kids!). Sounds like an artistic challenge to me. But, to flip it around, what might watercolour sound like? Enter Marco Ressman (one third of Pan-Pot), with this neat EP: two sides, two kinds of paint, and one chance to lay down the strokes without “going out of the lines”, splashing, smudging, or soaking the paper (sorry, I was way back in my childhood for a moment there).

“Gouache” (or bodycolour) according to Wikipedia “differs from watercolor in that the particles are larger, the ratio of pigment to water is much higher. This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reflective qualities.” Ressman’s take on the finicky pigment streamlines things with a mesmerising, metallic soundplane which rises and spins past, under-braided by steady tech-house drum patterns slowly drying into a soft-hued outro. I struggled to visualise the finished image, but was reminded of many previous Mobilee releases, with their low-temperature, high-pressure, single-minded aesthetic. In this case, the end-result is a nice rainy afternoon record.

Proper egg tempera (as opposed to prawn tempura) is not even a watercolour, but a way of bonding pigments to paints. It dries quickly, and has to be applied in thin layers, but unlike other paints, the colours don’t shift over time. Ressman’s interpretation on this binding agent likewise issues forth in thin layers of synth-pushed grooves, backgrounded by soft chimes and a snatched vocal. The louder you play it, the better it sounds. In this case, it’s easy to visualise a blue wash like an Yves Klein canvas on an overcast afternoon right before dusk. But maybe that’s laying it on a bit thick.

Mobilee / mobilee021
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[Peter Chambers]