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It's Monday lunchtime in the busiest week of Nesian Mystik's young lives and the group's Awanui Reeder, Donald McNulty and David Atai (rappers Junior Rikiau and Feleti Strickson-Pua are absent) still haven't had any breakfast.

Later that evening the central Auckland-based five piece would be opening the week-long World Series, the first act up in the hip hop showcase. The following night they were on the guest list for the APRA Silver Scroll Awards, the second Nesian Mystik single It's On among the finalists for the Song Of The Year title, while Friday saw the release of their debut long player, 'Polysaturated.' Finally, Nesian Mystik officially launched the new album at the Grey Lynn Park Festival on Saturday, which also saw the band gracing the cover of the NZ Herald's Weekend TimeOut. And if all that wasn't enough, the following week Nesian Mystik released their third single, For The People and supported US pop star Pink on a tour of the country's main centres, culminating with an appearance at the Rumba Festival, fittingly held in their own backyard at Western Springs Stadium.

But for now Reeder, McNulty and Atai are sitting in the dining area of their Bounce Records label owner, Dean Godward's Ponsonby house, munching on buttered toast as they tell me how hectic the last few weeks have been. Not only have Nesian Mystik had to finish recording and begin promoting 'PolySaturated', but several members, including Reeder, are also tertiary students and only finished sitting their exams the week.

"I'm doing business at AUT so I'll be able to apply what I learn to Nesian Mystik," says lead vocalist Reeder, who claims that he has had little trouble balancing music with studying. "It's time management at the end of the day. You just have to make sure that you get your priorities straight and make sure that you stick to them."

In a year of unprecedented exposure and success for Kiwi music, Nesian Mystik were the first unsigned act to create a major industry and media stir, after their debut single, launched in November 2001, lasted eight weeks in the Top 50. So were they surprised by the success of that single Nesian Style and the follow up It's On, both of which have achieved gold sales status, the only New Zealand singles to reach that elusive mark this year apart from Katchafire's Giddy Up?

Te Awanui Reeder

We're all just grateful about how it's gone," says Reeder. "We didn't expect either of our singles to do as well as they did. We just wrote them to get them out and the speed of what has happened since then has been really staggering. But because we're all young (18-19 years old), we don't really know the music industry yet and it's all been a bit of a learning curve."
Nesian Mystik have previously described Nesian Style as "Us talking about what our style is about, how we do things every day", while It's On is a party track which "... is about how we deliver our style of music."

How then would they describe the various styles of 'PolySaturated's' songs?
"We definitely wanted to be more diverse with songs so people can't class us as one style," says Atai. "They can listen to one song and say that's R&B but then the next song is hip hop and the one after that is something else entirely."
"We aren't purposely going out to make every song diverse," adds Reeder. "It just came out that way because we've all got different influences. David has got his guitar so he likes lots of guitary stuff. We like to use a specific genre but try and tip it so we can take it to the next level."

'PolySaturated' certainly begins on an ambitious note with the four minute-long Introduction, a humorous sketch featuring Nesian Mystik and their friend Oscar Knightly (currently on TV's The Panel), a spoken word format they return to later in the album on Interlude (Lua-Radio shout outs).