Yumi Zouma have always been a fragmented band, spread between New York, Paris and Christchurch.
While all four members are Kiwi, their 2016 debut album Yoncalla carried a sense of global nomadism - it was recorded in New York, named for a small town in Oregon, and its success saw them tour extensively around the world.
But for their new album Willowbank, Yumi Zouma came home. Recorded over last December and January in Christchurch, New Zealand lives and breathes on the new record - right down to its title, which reaches far into the band's past.
"Willowbank's a park in Christchurch that Charlie [Ryder] nearly drowned in as a seven-year old," says Josh Burgess, one of the founding members of Yumi Zouma. "He thought the moss was grass and walked onto it.
While Yoncalla was made in Burgess's New York apartment, where recordings were taken in a closet and street sirens often interfered with takes, Willowbank saw Yumi Zouma able to bring their ideas to life at Christchurch's Sawtooth studios. Burgess describes the recording process as surprisingly easy; indicative of New Zealand's summertime, and our relative isolation to the world.
"It kind of felt like we were a band that all lived in the same place," says Burgess. "We would go round to each other's houses, and we'd go out to dinner together. It was very different to Yoncalla, which was very much in my apartment in New York, go go go as quickly as you can - [Willowbank] just had a really relaxing feel.
"New Zealand's a super unique place. Whenever I get off the plane and I get back into Auckland, you're at the bottom of the world ... Maybe it's all in my head, but I definitely think that this record captures that kind of - 'the world is going on somewhere else' kind of thing. We were able to shut off and just make this record."
"It kind of felt like we were a band that all lived in the same place." Photo / supplied
Willowbank was mixed by Jake Aron, a producer, mixer and engineer who has worked with heavyweights such as Solange and Grizzly Bear. It's the first time Yumi Zouma have had a record mixed by someone else, and Burgess says while Aron "really got us," handing the album over to someone else was a daunting prospect.
"We've almost got this weird phobia that we do everything so idiosyncratically, and so wrong, that if we went into a studio people would be like 'Na na na, you can't do that.' The first tour we ever did was with Chet Faker in Australia, and every sound guy that we had was like, 'Why are you doing that! This is all wrong!'
"We had this old guy that took us aside and was like, 'Can we have a word? I don't know why for the life of me you would have a guitar playing the exact same melody that the singer's singing.' We were like, 'Why do you care man? I don't know why you're wearing, like, crocs and chinos, but I'm not bringing that up'."
Yumi Zouma: The sum of their parts. Photo / supplied
Willowbank may be rooted in New Zealand, but the world wants Yumi Zouma back. The morning I speak to Burgess, the four-piece have been hurriedly trying to sort out visas just hours before they fly out - on the world's longest flight no less, travelling from Auckland to Doha as they head off on a European tour.
The four of them are together now - but in the long term, Burgess says they may always be separated.
"We write in isolation and then bring ideas when we record and we're together," he says. "I think if we all really tried to do it all together all the time, I'm not sure it would have the same sort of brush strokes.
"I really think that Yumi Zouma is a sum of all our parts put together," he says.
