Madeira

MADEIRA is Kim Pflaum, a multi-hyphenate if there ever was one. Aside from songwriting, singing, and playing a variety of instruments, Pflaum is a graphic designer, music video director, writer, illustrator, and animal activist. Music became a major part of her life growing up in Christchurch, New Zealand. “As an introverted kid, music helped me express my emotions and frustrations when I didn’t know how else to cope,” Pflaum says. In 2013, she co-founded Yumi Zouma as lead singer and co-songwriter. Before leaving the band at the end of 2014, the group would tour the world and play concerts with artists including Lorde, Chet Faker, and TOPS. Now as a solo act with full creative control over her art, Pflaum has taken the opportunity to grow in new directions and experiment.

MADEIRA began before Yumi Zouma as an outlet for escapist songs about fantastical vacations and holidays. After years of globe-trotting and starting over again with a move to Auckland in 2014, returning to MADEIRA was restorative. “I saw music as an escape,” Pflaum says, “a way to take a break from my hectic life and just relax, to let music soothe and heal me.”

Bad Humors, her debut EP with Carpark Records, is her first new music since collaborations with Boycrush, Brett, and Cyril Hahn. With grace and melody, these five songs tackle heartbreak and betrayal, and offer a critique of performance artifice. These are songs of elevated synth-pop, of growth and change, of letting go and not holding back.