“I think we’re all over achievers,” says Yumi Zouma’s Kim Pflaum, who’s studying English Literature at an honours level. “We’re the kind of people that will leave all the assignments to the last minute but when the pressure’s on we can get them out and deliver them and get really decent marks. When there’s a break it’s like ‘ah, we’ll write heaps of music now’.”
Because she and her bandmates Charlie Ryder and Josh Burgess are spread between New York, Christchurch and Paris, they collaborate on their ‘dream-pop’ music via Dropbox. When it comes to sharing their individual parts with each other, there’s an element of apprehension. “I’m always like, ‘God I hope they like this – or they don’t hate it’,” says Charlie Ryder.
Photo: Unknown
But collaborating digitally allows everyone input into the editing process. “I think it’s really important,” says Pflaum, “So often you can too passionate about something and then you don’t realise that it’s not actually that good.”
They’re so used to their schedule that when they are together in the same room making music ,“it’s weird”, says Ryder.
Pflaum says she sometimes still feels like emailing the boys her edits even when they’re in the next room – but that’s only happened once in the past two months.
Listen to the full interview with Music 101’s Emma Smith:
