They might be the latest exciting act emerging from New Zealand, but before they embarked on their new record, Willowbank, Yumi Zouma never really felt like a band from New Zealand. It was only during what band-member Josh Burgess describes as, “a brief pause in all of our lives”, that the band settled on a plan to go home to Christchurch and record their first release put together entirely in their home country. The fruits of that homecoming will become evident with Willowbank’s release next month, but ahead of that, the band have shared a video to new single, Half Hour.
Half Hour is inspired by Josh’s grandfather’s death back when he was just seven, as he explains, “the first time I experienced death in any significant way was when I was seven. My granddad died, and I still remember this feeling knowing that now he was no longer on the planet, and no matter how hard I searched, he could not be found”. It is perhaps no surprise that the song mirrors that sense of confusion, loss and longing for the past. Musically, it’s sad certainly but also strong, as singer Christie’s vocal entwines with Josh’s atop a backing of complex rhythms and pulses of bassy synth. A rush of electronics and gorgeous pop-tinged melodies, Yumi Zouma have never sounded more ready for the success that looks set to come their way.
Filmed in Christchurch, New Zealand, by Julian Vares. Willowbank is out October 6th via Cascine. ‘Persephone’ is the third single from Yumi Zouma’s sophomore album, Willowbank. Listen to previously released singles ‘December’ and ‘Depths (Pt. I) here: http://bit.ly/yumi_dec_sc
After rejecting the Hall of Fame accolade twice in the past five years, members of The Clean have agreed to accept it at this year’s Silver Scrolls ceremony on September 28th.
“I think when we were asked it just didn’t feel right for us,” Robert Scott, the band’s bassist, “We feel we are outside the industry, and in the past we were shunned and dismissed, and it seems like by saying yes we would be forgiving the industry for that.
“Of course, with time they are proved wrong as our music has stood the test of time.
“It’s a strange thing dealing with other people’s perception of your music and what you stand for as a band.”
Inspired by obscure sixties garage and psychedelic bands, as well as the punk revolution of the 1970s, The Clean helped introduced New Zealand to what would later become known as ‘The Dunedin Sound’.
It was 1981 when a young Roger Shepherd was in the process of launching his new label, Flying Nun Records. He wanted to promote the many post-punk alternative bands that were springing up in his hometown of Christchurch, and further south – Dunedin.
Shepherd chose The Clean’s ‘Tally Ho’ as one of the two singles he released to the launch the label. It made it to No. 19 on the NZ singles chart, much to the delight of those involved. Not many people realised it at the time, but it was the start of something that would influence music and culture in NZ – and beyond – for decades to come.
The Clean helped cement The Dunedin Sound’s popularity – and Flying Nun’s finances – with their EP Boodle, Boodle, Boodle, also released in 1981. Surprisingly, it reached number four in the NZ charts and remained in the Top 20 for nearly six months. “To make Boodle and then it be so successful was just incredibly encouraging for everybody involved … like, ‘Hey, we’re on the right track here. Maybe we aren’t so crazy,’ DavidKilgour recalls.
The band’s members include guitarist Kilgour, his brother – drummer Hamish Kilgour, and bassist Robert Scott. Each has forged a life in music including multiple bands and projects including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, The Heavy Eights and more.
But it was The Clean that made it onto US college radio in the 1980s; garnered an enduring fan base in Australia, the UK and Europe; and influenced generations of NZ musicians and fans. And they’re still touring successfully across the world today.
As a reminder of how great The Clean really is, and to get you in the mood, here’s some quality gear to binge on:
The story of Boodle Boodle Boodle (2012)
“By the time we got to do Boodle Boodle Boodle, The Clean … were such a wonderfully great live band. Most of those songs were done in one or two takes.” Boodle producer Doug Hood
A video tracing the history of The Clean’s iconic first EP. Featuring Hamish Kilgour, David Kilgour, Robert Scott, producer Doug Hood and former band member the late Peter Gutteridge:
Earlier this year Boodle Boodle Boodle was awarded the 2017 Independent Music New Zealand Classic Record Award. We spoke to David Kilgour about the record. “We only [play live] every three years, so that’s how we do it. We take the mickey out of each other, in a kind and caring way. You can have a laugh at someone’s expense, but to a certain degree, and then you cross a line and the expression changes, and you know you’ve gone too far.”
– Robert Scott
The Clean: selected discography
Boodle, Boodle, Boodle – 1981
Great Sounds Great, Good Sounds Good, So-so Sounds So-so, Bad Sounds Bad, Rotten Sounds Rotten – 1982
For its Sounds Delicious series, the Seattle website and label Turntable Kitchen recently commissioned the New Zealand synthpop group Yumi Zouma to record a full-album cover of Oasis’ classic album “What’s The Story Morning Glory” , also here is their take on “She’s Electric” . Now Yumi Zouma have shared their take on one of the album’s best-known tunes: The searching singalong “Champagne Super Nova” . The new version is icy and removed enough that it only barely sounds like the original, but that grand central chorus hook still sounds great even in this new context.
Yumi Zouma will be covering in full the seminal sophomore LP (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis in its entirety for the series. Here’s what they told us about the project (sent from their tour…):
“When Matthew from Turntable Kitchen initially approached us to cover a record in it’s entirety for this project, we immediately said yes, and then came up with massive lists of favourite records that we had wanted to cover. The process of narrowing it down to one was completely impossible – we were in the middle of touring our own debut album Yoncalla, and so we would listen to albums in the van everyday.
This process continued until finally we came across the prospect of covering Oasis’s second full-length (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?. At first, the idea sounds ridiculous – covering the album with the most cliched songs from the most pigheaded douchebag rock ‘n’ roll band from an era everyone is tired of – it sounds like the scenario of what-not-to-do when choosing a record to cover. Anyone with a sense of decency would prefer Blur,
Then we put on the CD, listened to it while driving to LA, and immediately knew it was the one. For kids who grew up in the commonwealth of the 90’s, this was the perfect album. The legacy of the Country House vs Roll With It battle, the bad reviews, the stories about the Knebworth gigs, the sibling rivalry, the breakups, and visceral ineptitude – those were all important to us, but given all that, it’s remarkable how (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? remains a classic illustration of power-pop songwriting spread over an entire release. Hate it or love it, this is the album of our youth. It’s been an absolute pleasure to cover, and we’re thankful to Matthew from Turntable Kitchen for allowing us the opportunity to do so.”
We are SO pumped that Yumi Zouma will be covering “Wonderwall,” “Don’t Look Back In Anger,” Some Might Say,” “Champagne Supernova,” for SOUNDS DELICIOUS. If you’re like us, you probably have some solid, angsty memories of the year the original album came out. Hearing Yumi Zouma reinvent it is already making our head spin.
I am enormously proud to share the music video for Preservation with you. I worked closely with Julia Vares, who produced, shot, edited and patiently translated my ideas onto the screen . We shot this film over two days on the streets I grew up on in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand. The dancer, Bebe, I met in a record shop in Dunedin and instantly wanted her to be in the film. Her grace, and self-assured-ness was astounding and for me, it fit perfectly. Bebe, and Lisa Wilkinson, who choreographed the dance completely nailed it.
“Preservation” is the title & first song on my second record. There’s an intensity to it, but I actually find it quite beautiful in so many ways. It was cleansing to write. It is about loss, reflection and the future. For some reason, during the release of the album, I struggled to fully understand it’s meaning, there’s this sort of un-conscious state I often need to enter with songwriting, where meanings tend to become clearer and more obvious to me, months, or, years later…Enjoy. NR x
Yumi Zouma are a New Zealand band based in Christchurch,The band have been honing their exquisite craft since 2014, at times separately, from all corners of the world, at others, in a collective space. this meticulous, bountiful songwriting process had, up until today, yielded a pair of extended plays and last year’s full-length debut, Yoncalla. it’s a very pleasant surprise, then, that Yumi Zouma has announced Willowbank, its sophomore album, due out october 6th via Cascine Records .
Willowbank marks the first time the band has had time to write and record a large group of songs together in their native New Zealand, so perhaps it’s fitting that the album’s first single, “December,” seems like the perfect distillation of summer at the bottom of the planet. as always, counter-melodic motifs are interwoven with ease, though Christie Simpson’s lead vocal sits more squarely in the mix than ever before, feeling less a part of the overall texture and more like a distinctly separate entity. capped off by a stout, brassy coda, Yumi Zouma’s latest single retains a peaceful majesty that has easily become the outfit’s calling card.
Mermaidens are a three-piece outfit from Wellington, New Zealand, who are defined by intricate and unique songwriting, and a hypnotic live synergy.
Drawing inspiration from bands like Warpaint, Fugazi, Exploded View and Sleater-Kinney, Mermaidens’ sound offers a mesmerising dip into the realms of post-punk and psych where warm harmonies and dreamy, hypnotic lyrics, entwine with dark and moody riff-based melodies.
Taken from the forthcoming album Perfect Body, which is due out on 4th August via Flying Nun,
New Zealand songwriter Aldous Harding released her new album, “Party”, . Featuring the singles ‘Horizon’ and ‘Imagining My Man’, her second long-player has been universally applauded. She will make her debut TV appearance next week, performing ‘Horizon’ on the BBC’s Later…with Jools Holland.
Party was produced with the award-winning John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse) in his hometown of Bristol, taking Harding away from her New Zealand base for an intensive two-week immersion in the studio. As well as a raft of musical contributions from Parish, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas lends vocals to recent single ‘Imagining My Man’ and Party closer ‘Swell Does The Skull’.
Like her record, Harding speaks slowly, in deeply considered sentences, her chin perched on books as she smoked a cigarette. Harding’s roots are in New Zealand’s almost bizarrely fertile folk scene — a former roommate, NadiaReid, has also drawn international eyes — but some time early in the creation of the songs for Party, something shifted, she says. Going over the record song-by-song, Harding says that the turning point arrived while she was writing what would become the album’s title track, a song with that slowly swells into a chorus that cracks its shell of restraint, emerging as something almost operatic. “When I heard the chorus [of ‘Party’] in my head I kind of went, ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that,'” she says. “I’ve done something different, and it feels much better. Fits better. And I… went for it, by the sounds of it,” she laughs. “I just got stuck in it, Party’s velvet-soft sound is a bedding for a gifted weapon-of-a voice. Harding puts on so many masks throughout the album — the shriek, the sullen smoker, the concerned love — but there’s something calmly self-assured behind the costume changes. She’s always wearing the same shirt. As we spoke, she thought aloud that, maybe, the record is a document of self-imposed isolation in some way, a reckoning with ambition and the costs of trying deeply. Have you ever exiled yourself in order to try and be completely yourself and see what magic may come of it?.
Imagining My Man
“It’s just about all of the… tender and frightening thoughts that come with being in love. And growing up, and trying to figure out what the hell it is that you want. And trying to love another person, when you’re constantly pushing your own plate away, isn’t easy. It’s no one’s fault, that’s just how it happens sometimes. You’ve just got to ride it out.”
Horizon
“Good-bye — and not necessarily for any reason at all other than… I’ve got to go. I’m showing that person two things; their life, and their life with me. And I’m taking one of them away. And that’s me.
“In a lot of ways it was me choosing art over a person, which I didn’t necessarily know at the time. And feeling like, in order to do it how I need to do it, I need to be on my own. There are people who like to sit at a dining table with six other people and listen to John Coltrane, [Blue] Train and pour wine. I love that too, but I’m the kind of person who if you give me a plate of food, you give me money or… alcohol…. I want to take it in to the dark on my own, so no one has to see how I approach it. Maybe that’s an insecurity, I don’t know. I don’t feel particularly insecure about it.”
Swell Does The Skull
“Yeah, it’s closer to the first record in the sense that it’s got that kind of… back. It’s not so… modern. It’s got an arc. There’s still an archaic fume to that one.”
What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming
“The song is quite humorous, but at the same time I think it’s kind of Randy Newman-esque — there’s like, a deep sadness inside that jolly sound.
“For like four or five months of my life I was too scared to like, move around and reach out for things because I was worried that I’d my hands would run into glass, like I could reach up and if I reached up and knocked on the air it would make a noise. I couldn’t look at the sky because I was worried that I see a crack. And like, light would start to come. Not nice light — like, someone else’s sunlight. I didn’t like that.
“It was pretty… rough, coming up with it. Because questions like that are what keep people frightened. Not trusting that things are real. This is stuff you think about when you do drugs, this is the stuff that will drive you nuts. I guess that’s why I kept it kind of upbeat and humorous, because I don’t want to frighten people, just wanted to remind them that that’s normal. And it’s real — as real as the stuff you worry isn’t. And just don’t f****** worry about it. Because at the end of the day it’s actually quite funny.”
New Zealand trio Opposite Sexcalled their new album “Hamlet” should come as little surprise. Dunedin, their hometown, is surrounded by drama both geographically and culturally. Lying at the foot of New Zealand, the furtherest city in the world from London, Dunedin is also home to iconic music labels Flying Nun and Expressway, and has a rich tradition of music and art.
On Hamlet, Tim Player, Lucy Hunter, Reggie Norris have created an ode to the drama and ideology of a city that has produced bands of the quality of The Clean, The Chills, and the Dead C. Released on Dull Tools Label, the Brooklyn label co-run by Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts, “Hamlet” mixes punk, Kiwi pop and straight up avant-garde weirdness.
On “Oh Ivy” Lucy, who has worked as a restaurant pianist, slips from gentle and soothing coos to shrieks and wails. It’s both cathartic and desperate.
Opposite Sex have already left a permanent impression within today’s younger underground generation. Besides that one fact, there aren’t many unifying features of a band so scattered, but so brilliantly chaotic, and by no means confused. But that’s just what you get from a band with so much uncontrollable inspiration, with imagination that’s like not unlike mashing one’s hands against the keyboard of existence
Off the album “Hamlet” LP
Available on Dull Tools an album that came out August 12th 2016
Kane Strang’s album “Blue Cheese” is a slow-burning gem debut album that inherently necessitates repetition. Clever and quirky, the motley collection from New Zealand’s Kane Strang flows fluidly through agile turns of phrase, swelling psychedelic textures, and pointed articulation of instrumentation. It’s the kind of album that was made with care. Each song is quite different from the next, yet united in a hazy, lumbering psychedelic aura.
Strang maintains the discernible structure of his psychedelic pop numbers by always pairing at least two elements of together as a slightly distorted mirror. Rhythmic harmonization between bass and vocals on “The Web” and “Never Kissed A Blonde” make the songs’ melodies pop. On the album’s closer, “Scarlet King Magnolia,” the melody is paralleled in voice and guitar as it patiently wanders forward, often only wavering one step higher or lower. The cohesion makes for an easy and consuming listen.
The album’s other key feature is a ephemeral use of subtlety. Sneaking in on short pauses and quiet riffs, the placement of the little things is what makes the songs shine. Subtle syncopation in “What’s Wrong” and “Full Moon, Hungry Sun” provide attention grabbing breaks from otherwise lingering tunes. One deep listen to “She’s Appealing” will reveal an intricate web of layers all align into a full and progressive psychedelic backdrop.
Truly too short but just the right amount of sweet, Blue Cheese is the concentrated effort Strang had promised. For a self-produced album, it’s got a whole lot of charm that is derived from slightly from its lo-fi nature but mostly from its confident delivery. As a grouping of songs, it serves as the perfect introduction to what Strang has to offer and jumping off point for the rest of his music career. I hope it receives the attention and praise it deserves. You can purchase it on Kane Strang’s Bandcamp below.
It’s kind of hard to believe that The Bats have been back for a decade now — this is their fourth album since their 2005 reunion, and like its predecessors, it shows that the band have lost none of the songwriting chops that made them one of the most prominent exponents of the much-lauded “Dunedin sound” in the 1980s. (They’re actually from Christchurch, but close enough.) While their music is timeless, their songs are very much rooted in the present. “Not So Good” (above), this album’s closing track, lambasts a leader who sounds awfully familiar: “Every time he opens up/ He’s filling up a liar’s cup / He knows better, and that’s for sure/ It’s your fault if you are poor.”
The Fat Angel Sings 