Yumi Zouma had its roots in Christchurch dance-punk group Bang! Bang! Eche!, who formed in 2007 when the members were still in their mid-teens. Their sound took the aggressive stabbing guitars of post-punk, but cranked up the groove and added synths. They slotted in well with groups of the moment such as Mint Chicks, Cut Off Your Hands, and Shocking Pinks. When the APRA Silver Scroll was held in Christchurch in 2009, Bang! Bang! Eche! performed. They gained slots at major local festivals including Rhythm & Vines, Homegrown, and Camp A Low Hum, and toured internationally, appearing at CMJ and SXSW in the US. In 2010, MTV named them among the “25 Best New Bands In The World.”
Over this time, Bang! Bang! Eche! guitarist Charlie Ryder connected with two other musicians from the vibrant Christchurch scene. He met Josh Burgess when they were involved in Smokefreerockquest as teens. Burgess was an early member of Bang! Bang! Eche!, but quit in London, after a gruelling European tour. Ryder befriended Kim Pflaum (who made music as Kim K) when the pair were both flying to Auckland to attend the Big Day Out festival (Bang! Bang! Eche! were playing). Meanwhile, Burgess had formed the group Sleepy Age and also toured overseas with this group, before bringing Ryder and Pflaum in to create an extended line-up of the band. Burgess then took a job for US indie label Captured Tracks which saw him move to New York, while Ryder left to study in France.
The band never explained the derivation of the name “Yumi Zouma”
Around 2013, Burgess sent Ryder a song idea and they brought in Pflaum to supply vocals. ‘A Long Walk Home for Parted Lovers’ retained the pacey groove of their earlier work, but had a breezy, relaxed vibe with low-in-the-mix vocals, retro-synth melodies, and layers of reverbed, plucked guitars.
Ryder excitedly sent it to a bunch of his favourite labels. He had to guess the email address of Jeff Bratton from Brooklyn indie label Cascine, so was shocked when Bratton replied with an offer to sign them, asking if they had more songs. They lied and said that they did, then hurriedly set about writing more in the same mould.
The band never explained the derivation of the name “Yumi Zouma” though in early interviews there was a suggestion that referred to two people who encouraged them to make music together.
From bedrooms to arenas
‘A Long Walk Home for Parted Lovers’ gained hundreds of thousands of downloads and was hyped on international music blogs. This led to offers to support chart-topping Australian act Chet Faker. They hurriedly arranged a warm-up gig at Christchurch venue Darkroom, which was co-run by T’Nealle Joie, a former member of Bang! Bang! Eche!. They played 18 dates with Chet Faker across Australasia, before joining Lorde’s first Australasian tour, which included a show at Vector Arena (now Spark Arena) in front of 10,000 people. This was followed by headlining shows and festival slots in Europe and the US.
Their debut 2014 EP was entitled simply EP and featured a photo of an anonymous model they found online and cleared with the photographer (many falsely thought it was a shot of Pflaum). NME, The Guardian, and Pitchfork raved about the EP and were especially impressed by streaming hits ‘Sålka Gets Her Hopes Up’ and ‘The Brae’, named after the road Ryder used to live on, and where his early bands practised.
Unfortunately, Pflaum announced her departure soon afterwards. Not only did they lose her striking voice and songwriting skills, as visual designer she also helped create the artwork on their EP. Pflaum subsequently signed with Carpark Records (US) under the artist name Madeira and created a buzz with her debut EP, recorded with producer Shannon Fowler (aka Tom Lark). She followed up with an album under the name Laumė with French producer Julian Getreau.
Ryder and Burgess brought in a new vocalist, Christie Simpson – a friend from Christchurch who they had seen delivering an impressive rendition of a Fleetwood Mac song. The trio each lived in different cities, so Sam Perry from Christchurch group Zen Mantra was added initially to fill in for Ryder when he couldn’t tour due to his studies. Perry soon became an integral part of the group and offered songwriting ideas, going on to write the hook of one of their biggest songs, ‘Depths Pt.1’.
Yumi Zouma’s EP II (2015) showed a more danceable side to the group, particularly on lead single ‘Alena’, though their overall sound remained laid back. At the time, the indie music press was heralding the return of “dream pop”. The term was retrospectively applied to acts from the 80s, Cocteau Twins being the prime example, though its current renaissance was through modern acts such as Beach House. Simpson’s vocals were sufficiently low in the mix to see Yumi Zouma tagged by this same label, which perhaps helped extend their reach overseas, even though it risked pigeon-holing them.
WIth vocals mixed low, Yumi Zouma’s music was tagged as “dream pop”
While on tour together, the group wrote parts for their 2016 debut album Yoncalla during downtime. The title referred back to a time when they were held up crossing the Canadian border, which led them to miss their vehicle booking and hotel reservation. Fortunately they were able to spend the next day recovering in Yoncalla, Oregon.
They wrote song ideas while on tour together, and developed them at their home studios afterwards. Their collaborative approach extended to the lyrics. Often one member would provide the central theme of the song, but input from the others could change things considerably. A prime example is ‘Keep It Close To Me’ which started as a song about Ryder’s favourite souvlaki shop Dimitris (Christchurch), but ended up being about a romantic relationship rather than a culinary one.
Simpson told Vice that she found the collaborative approach to lyric writing could be freeing: “You get a little bit sick of writing about your own feelings sometimes. I don’t think I could ever be a folk singer that just sings about my feelings all the time. Even when I used to write songs when I was a teenager, I would always write from the perspective of a character I made up.”
Sometimes song ideas could sit around for a while, before someone found the key to make them work – as in the case of ‘Barricade (Matter Of Fact)’ which was one of Ryder’s old ideas that Simpson and Burgess, resurrected by creating a new chorus part. The group was also aided by having three singers – Simpson, Burgess, and Ryder. Mostly the latter two just provided backing vocals, but sometimes they came to the fore, as on ‘Text From Sweden’ which was more like a duet between Simpson and Burgess.
Yumi Zouma’s most surprising release over this period was in 2016, a full-album cover version of Oasis’s What’s The Story Morning Glory. They expertly drew the pop essence out of the original material and also took the chance to experiment, most notably on their rendition of ‘She’s Electric’.
Together and apart
For Willowbank (2017), Yumi Zouma tried a new approach: meeting in person to record in Christchurch for an extended summer visit. They also filmed a music video for ‘December’ with Simpson taking a stroll through some of their favourite hometown spots, with the rest of the band making a cameo appearance.
For ‘Willowbank’ (2017), Yumi Zouma tried a new approach: meeting in person to record
Willowbank had a more direct sound than their previous work and Burgess put this down to them using an outside engineer. He explained to Marty Duda from 13th Floor: “We’ve been mixing it ourselves for so long … When something didn’t sound the way we wanted it to – we added more layers. Where this time we had a little bit more faith that, if you get one or two sounds that sit quite nicely that they will be sufficient enough to carry that part. We were listening through to the first record a couple of days ago, and there’s just so much going on. Where I think this time, it’s a little bit sparser and less vocal layers, I suppose. I guess that’s the easiest way to describe it: less is a little bit more, on this one.”
The engineer who mixed the album was Brooklyn producer Jake Aron (known for his work with Solange and Grizzly Bear) and he also mixed their following album. The Guardian described the collection as “serene disco”, exemplified by standout track ‘Depths (Pt.1)’, with its 16th note cymbal pattern and subtly-funky bass.
Around this time, Perry announced he was leaving the group, so for their next New Zealand tour they added drummer Olivia Campion. They first met when her former group Girlboss had supported them on their Yonchalla tour – Ryder was school friends with lead singer Lucy Botting. Campion then joined as full time member of Yumi Zouma.
The band were coming to the end of their deal with Cascine, so decided to release a six-song collection, EP III (2018), to fill the gap while they collected an album’s worth of songs to take to a new label. Cascine were named after a park in France and Bretton had taken Burgess to visit the spot, which led to the name of their song ‘Powder Blue / Cascine Park.’
Yumi Zouma’s growing reputation in the music industry was reflected by the fact that the EP premiered on Billboard’s website which helped ‘In Camera’ to become their biggest streamer up to that point. ‘Crush (It’s Late, Just Stay)’ was another track on which Burgess and Simpson shared lead vocals, with his part providing a wonderful counterpoint to hers.
Beyond dream pop
Yumi Zouma signed new deals with Inertia Music (Australia) and Polyvinyl Record Co (US), which gave them further reach into overseas markets, given that both labels had been active longer than Cascine and had more heavy-hitters on their rosters.
The lyrics of ‘Cool For A Second’ seemed to make fun of overly hyped dream pop scene
Their first release under this new deal was Truth Or Consequences (2020). The lyrics of ‘Cool For A Second’ had a wry wit to them, almost as if the band members were making fun of their own moment at the forefront of the overly hyped dream pop scene. The Covid restrictions hampered touring and they went straight into working on new material, though it was a somewhat piecemeal process. Some work took place remotely, while they also did studio sessions in Wellington, Florence, New York, Los Angeles, and London.
In the end, they had so many half-completed tracks that they set themselves a deadline of 1 September 2021 to complete Present Tense (2022). It drew on songs that extended back as far as 2018. ‘Astral Projection’ had already been cast aside by both Simpson and Ryder, before Burgess found a way to make it work and it became the album’s biggest track. They took a new approach to the visuals by hiring Alex Ross Perry to create what amounted to a short film over three interconnected music videos (for ‘In The Eyes Of Our Love,’ ‘Where The Light Used To Lay,’ and ‘Astral Projection’).
The band members continued to live in different cities, with Simpson moving to Melbourne, leaving only drummer Campion living back in Aotearoa (in Wellington). This didn’t stop their momentum – in 2023 they released EP IV, before moving on to recording their next album No Love Lost To Kindness (2026).
There was a heavier edge to some of the songs, which Burgess put down to the fact that they started recording the album in Mexico City in the midst of a North American tour, as he explained to the hosts of the 95bFM breakfast show: “If you’re playing shows, things are louder and raunchier. If you go into the studio in between touring then you’re going to bring some of that energy. In the past we’ve gone into the studio after touring and then you’re thinking ‘I want to chill’ and so you end up with a different sort of energy. Also, starting a lot of the songs in the room together, you lean into that more.”
This approach was most evident on the big guitars of ‘Blister’ which they admitted took some inspiration from the local rock bands that were around during their childhoods, such as Stellar*, Fur Patrol, Tadpole, and Shihad. The singles ‘Bashville on the Sugar’, ‘Phoebe’s Song’, and ‘Cowboy Without a Clue’ continued in this vein, though there were enough down-tempo tracks on the second half of the album to keep long-term fans happy.
By this stage, the band had such a clear understanding of their sound that the album still sounded like a natural progression rather than a sudden jump. What’s more, the songs still sounded as sharp and modern as their early hits. Despite living in such disparate locations, Yumi Zouma continued to show the remote way of working remained no problem for them and could still produce some of their finest work.
