It makes perfect sense that Finn Gronemeyer, one half of German band Zimmer90, studied architecture. With each loved-up, funky pop melody that they craft, the Freiburg-based duo create a room (the English translation of “zimmer”) for the listener to step into – a shifting space that exists in a constant state of musical fluidity.
“Designing a house is a little bit like making a song or an album,” confirms Gronemeyer, speaking to NME alongside bandmate Josch Becker from a flat in Berlin. The two boys are just about to start their C25 photoshoot, for which NME has rented the grand, spacious apartment. Velvet curtains frame the floor-to-ceiling windows and a collection of surrealist art covers the walls. “Music is strongly connected with spaces – it can change the atmosphere of a room. Zimmer90 is essentially an imaginary place. This room looks different every day… for every record, we enter Zimmer90 from a different perspective.”
Becker first approached Gronemeyer at a party in Stuttgart, where they grew up. He’d spotted him playing some “jazzy tunes” on the piano and asked him where he learnt to play like this, which led to Gronemeyer recommending his teacher.
After Becker took up the offer, that very teacher would encourage the two to try writing together. Having started out by gigging locally in “every bar that we knew”, Zimmer90 played their biggest headline show at Stuttgart’s 2,100-capacity Wagenhallen last September. Perhaps the proudest man in the room, piano teacher was in attendance.
“We sometimes wrote eight or nine songs on the day we played concerts, because our set wasn’t long enough,” recalls Gronemeyer of those formative experiences. This loose, unstructured approach persists into their present-day output, where their irresistibly summery indie – cut from the same cloth as Djo and C24 alumni Royel Otis – is allowed to develop in any direction.
Their best-known track is 2023 TikTok sensation ‘What Love Is’. Hooked around a funky riff that would sit well on Tame Impala’s earworm-stuffed 2015 album ‘Currents’, its success helped turn Zimmer90’s world upside down overnight. “At the beginning, it was very weird and overwhelming for us,” admits Becker, explaining how record label requests began to flood into their inbox.
“It didn’t change our approach to making music at all, because it’s a mistake to think you can write something that is likely to go viral,” continues Gronemeyer. “We’re really strongly protecting our process from stuff like this. Once the little stresses and hectic [period] of the virality wore off, we went back to following our intuition, going step by step… seeing it as a journey where we can hopefully fulfil ourselves.”
This ethos gave rise to the escapist ‘what a life’, Zimmer90’s sun-kissed contribution to the ‘Bose x NME: C25’ mixtape, the title of which was inspired by a throwaway remark Becker heard one of his friends give recently while they were swimming off the Spanish coast. “I feel alive when I’m by the sea, and I also like to go surfing,” he explains. “It [captured] the feeling of being at a warm place, feeling this gratitude for life and an appreciation for nature.”
At the same time, there is a more bittersweet meaning to the phrase. “Life sometimes feels really stressful,” says Becker. “We wanted to point at this place that can give you relief,” adds Gronemeyer. “[It’s about] wishing yourself out of the hectic, stressful, day-to-day life that I think a lot of us are experiencing.”
Minimalist by design, Zimmer90’s music provides a fitting antidote to our often overstimulating modern society. Cosy and inviting as their sound is, it’s unsurprising that Becker and Gronemeyer come across as such gentle individuals, keeping their feet on the ground.
“We’re going pretty casual,” says Becker, when asked about the plans today for their C25 shoot. “We have a very DIY approach,” adds Gronemeyer, telling NME why less is often more for Zimmer90. “We just shot a music video last week, where we invited some friends to sit in nature with a beer… [we did] two or three takes on a phone. It’s sometimes not really necessary to make a super fancy, crazy music video.”
Next on the horizon is debut album ‘Interior’, set for release on September 19 (coincidentally, the same day as the ‘Bose x NME: C25’ mixtape). Recording it served as a “safe space,” away from the chaos of touring and everyday life, says Becker. “It was a pretty cool way for us to ground ourselves.”
“We went step-by-step and crafted the precise sound that we have right now, but we never feel like it’s finished,” Gronemeyer adds. “[Even] when we finish a track, it’s just one more puzzle piece to create the bigger picture. There’s so much between the two of us that we haven’t discovered yet, creatively.”
Stay tuned to NME.com/C25 for the latest on the return of the iconic mixtape