New Zealand alternative pop band Yumi Zouma today share the final single to be lifted from the record Present Tense entitled Astral Projection.

Throughout their fourth LP, which follows 2020’s acclaimed album Truth or Consequences, Yumi Zouma expand on their established, ethereal dream pop with defiance and a palpable sense of urgency, drawing on collaboration to push the four-piece out of their comfort zone, looking to explore the extreme edges of their music, resulting in their most formidable release to date.

At the same time, the four-piece approached their songwriting in a more deliberative, time-rich manner, affording each track on Present Tense the space and opportunity to gestate at its own pace, content to let ideas come into their own

The final track on the album, Astral Projection epitomises this revitalised creative process, originally conceived by guitarist Josh Burgess, who felt as though he’d been handed a sliver of brilliance after the song had been through multiple rewrite attempts by bassist Charlie Ryder and vocalist Christie Simpson, before ultimately abandoning it.

“It was as if I’d been given this rescue cat who had the potential to be great,” he says.

The accompanying video for Astral Projection, filmed by director Alex Ross Perry (Soccer Mommy, Sleigh Bells, 2018’s feature film Her Smell), is the final instalment in a trilogy of narrativised, interconnected videos that follows on from In The Eyes Of Our Love and Where The Light Used To Lay.

Present Tense is due out this Friday, March 18.

Image: Aaron Lee and Alex Evans

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