Five Things with Yum Yum

1. Growing Up

Neither of us are trained or from particularly musical families. We both just got a hold of records or heard older people making music and got hooked!

2. Inspirations

Natalie Slade: My first love was Ella Fitzgerald. I got given her CD as a freebie when I bought some other album and I didn’t put it down for months. I sat there trying to emulate each track exactly as she did for hours on end.

Jayo James: To name just one is hard, but I could listen to Sly Stone all day. He pushed so many creative and social boundaries with his music. There’s A Riot Goin’ On, which was named as an answer to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, is a classic example of his creativity – it’s said he played and recorded and overdubbed nearly the whole album by himself.

3. Your Crew

Yum Yum is a duo made up of Jayo James on production and Natalie Slade on vocals. Nat had just arrived back in town and was jamming with people here and there, when a friend of her new flatmate gave her a USB of beats from a guy called Jayo. We met up and jammed a couple times, and before you know it we had our first EP. Since then we’ve maintained the same relaxed approach to it all – we jam together and we’re lucky enough to get to work with other amazing artists like Hau, DanielSan, Tall Black Guy and The Bankrupt Billionaires, amongst others.

4. The Music You Make and Play

We make soul music in the tradition of hip hop and dub in a DIY fashion. We’ve recorded everything so far at home in Jayo’s lounge room on a borrowed mic. Our sound has been likened to artists like Belleruche, Quantic and Alice Russell, which is a great compliment. The live show is something that we enjoy the most – Natalie has a great stage presence and Jayo plays as many parts as possible live – MPC-style keys and turntables.

5. Music, Right Here, Right Now

Sydney isn’t exactly known for its thriving urban music scene but there’s some really fresh artists here dropping killer stuff – Steve Spacek just dropped the iOS Mixtape; Sampa The Great dropped The Great Mixtape; Sarah Connor dropped her single ‘No Fear’; The New Venusians got a lot of love OS with their single; Katalyst dropped the Guilty Simpson record, amongst others… so we’re in a pretty good place. For us right now, we just dropped a vinyl of our double EP, are getting excited about the Slum Village gig on January 2, plus we’re doing a lot of writing – so good times ahead!