ZOTUMBO
Behind the sound
The story.
ZOTUMBO is a genre-bending band built around groove, storytelling and musical experimentation. Fronted by vocalist and rhythm guitarist Mason Rook, the five-piece combines hip-hop-influenced rhythms, bass-heavy grooves, funk, distorted guitars, electronic textures, samples and alternative music without treating any one genre as a boundary.
Alongside Mason are lead guitarist Zara Quinn, bassist Leo Mendoza, keyboardist and sample manipulator Emi Tanaka, and drummer Callum “Crash” Doyle.
The band's songs can be funny, strange, personal, energetic or unexpectedly emotional. What connects them isn't subject matter or genre but ZOTUMBO's approach: find the groove, tell the story and don't remove an interesting idea simply because it doesn't traditionally belong there.
Early material including “Fudge and Maddie” helped establish the band's fascination with turning unlikely subjects into full-scale songs. Behind the humour is a genuine commitment to songwriting, musicianship and experimentation. ZOTUMBO isn't particularly interested in deciding what ZOTUMBO is supposed to sound like. That's usually how they discover what the next song should sound like.
Big noise. Strange stories. No apologies.
ZOTUMBO began with songs that didn't comfortably fit anywhere else. Mason Rook had been writing conventional material but became increasingly interested in songs about unusual people, everyday situations and stories other musicians dismissed as too strange or insignificant.
An early performance of one of those songs received a stronger reaction than his conventional material. Zara Quinn recognised something in it immediately: rather than making the material more respectable, she wanted to make it bigger. Leo Mendoza subsequently joined and shifted the songs toward stronger bass-driven grooves. Callum Doyle entered after filling in at a rehearsal when another drummer failed to appear; he learned the material quickly and never really left.
Emi Tanaka was initially brought in to contribute samples and electronic elements to a recording. That changed everything. Instead of remaining a straightforward guitar band, ZOTUMBO discovered there was no reason rock, hip-hop, funk, electronics, samples and bizarre noises couldn't exist in the same song.
The members eventually stopped trying to decide precisely what genre ZOTUMBO belonged to. If something grooves, tells a story or makes the band members grin when they hear it, it can become a ZOTUMBO song. The name ZOTUMBO deliberately has no fixed definition. It sounds enormous. It sounds slightly ridiculous. And therefore it suited them perfectly.
