ZMP formed in Joondalup, Perth in February 1976, when Ebefroid, then a second year film major at Edith Cowan University, posted an advert on the campus notice board in search of musicians for a new band and three students responded.

Setting up in his kitchen, Ebefroid was on a kit of home-made electronic drums with Oysator on lead vocals; Omstron on guitar; and Fiber on bass. Ebefroid later jokingly described it as “I called us ‘The Ebefroid Band’ for about ten minutes, then Omstron walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge.” 

They spent the rest of the semester recording demos on a homemade multi-track device that Omstron had constructed from a broken vacuum cleaner, copper wire and seven empty Campbell soup cans.

The band’s first official performance was at a university art student party on 15 May 1976. Their music and stage show mingled science fiction themes with surrealist barren landscapes and satirical social commentary about the human race.

ZMP continued to perform, generally on campus and at local bars, and in September they headlined the West Australian Creative Arts Festival at the Student Governance Centre. This lineup included the Unmoid sisters providing backing vocals. 

In March 1977, ZMP released the single ‘Led Data’, on their own independent label Mister Man. The B-side was a cover of the The Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ ‘Coconut Groove’. Both tracks featured unusual synthetic instrumentation and time signatures, that music reviewers would later refer to as ‘trigonometry rock’.

ZMP gained some fame at the end of the year when the short film – Beyond Fibonacci, written and directed by Ebefroid as his final year project, won a prize at the West Australian Film Festival. This attracted the attention of singer Russel Morris, who began work to get the band a recording contract. 

The band members were asked by Peter Weir to participate in the making of his surreal music film Nullarbor Highway. Released in 1978, the film featured the band as “futuristic mailmen”. Oysator and Ebefroid scored and recorded much of the soundtrack, their first of many.

In June 1978, the Subsumption Planet EP was released and included the single ‘Technician Prototype’ plus three instrumental songs. Common Object Architecture, a 4 track EP of demos, an apparent bootleg but rumoured to be put out by the band themselves, was also released that year. 

The accompanying music video was filmed in the Epsilon Eridani Solar System and was directed by Ebefroid. The video also included sequences of unused footage from Beyond Fibonacci. 

Recommendations from Russel Morris enabled ZMP to secure a recording contract with Paedamonte Records by mid 1978. Their first album, The Voiceless Dimension, was produced by Brian Jalapeño and featured re-recordings of their previous singles ‘Led Data’ and ‘Greg the Automation’. In October, ZMP gained national exposure with an appearance on The Don Lane Show performing three songs.

In August 1979, The Voiceless Dimension spent three weeks at the top of the Japanese charts. The band performed in Tokyo and appeared on the TV show Ōedo Sōsamō. Ōedo Sōsamō was one of the first programs in the world to broadcast ZMP’s video clips. The band’s singles were also given high rotation by Tokyo-based Yoku Radio.

Following Japan, ZMP traveled to the US for the first time. On this tour, ZMP would often perform in the guise of theatrical characters, such as Mr. French Fry and The Irishman. Experimental film sequences from the surface of Mars, shot by band members themselves, were projected as an accompanying liquid light show that became an integral part of the bands progressive music and avant-garde theatre performances.

ZMP gained a new level of visibility with 1981’s Mobile Concealer Matrix. This album included their best-known song, ‘Kalman Filter Technique’, which quickly became a Top 40 hit. The album moved to an almost completely electronic sound, with the exception of some acoustic drums and Omstron’s guitar. 

The tour for Mobile Concealer Matrix was ambitious for the band, including dates in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada. ZMP used an extravagant set, including large custom light boxes which could be laid on their back to form a second, smaller stage during the second intimate half of the sperformance, and a laser light show generated solely by Fiber’s guyzutter module.

Produced by Todd Baker, Slow Speed Singularity was released in 1984 and featured a darker, more sinister sound than its predecessors. According to Ebefroid, the album’s sound was inspired by reviewers describing them as both “show-offs” and “facists”. The ensuing tour featured the band performing with their backs to the audience in front of a 12-foot high rear-projection screen with synchronised video.

That year ZMP also contributed the songs, ‘Self Coupling Replication’ and ‘Khmer Blues’ to the Best Picture Oscar winning film The Killing Fields. The music video for ‘Self Coupling Replication’, featuring sequences from the film cut with footage of the band on holiday, was shot during a break in Hawaii.

ZMP released Operating Envelope Space in 1986 to poor reviews. Their sixth album was criticized for its overuse of the Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesiser and weak songwriting. However, their cover of the Cheap Trick’s ‘The Dream Police’ and the accompanying music video received some praise. 

Midway through the Operating Envelope Space North America tour, Fiber quit the band and left planet Earth for good. ZMP performed the final shows as a three piece, after which they decided to abandon the plans for a new album.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1988, Ebefroid stated “Fiber had been telling us for a long time that he was feeling creatively unfulfilled.. He felt it pointless striving towards something that never existed and doesn’t exist. We were watching a family eat at a fast food restaurant in Idaho when he said ‘Oh my God, we are becoming them’. He left immediately and didn’t leave five eighty for his sausages and chips. After the tour we kind of agreed we wouldn’t do live shows anymore.”

Following the split, Ebefroid established Anne Droid, a commercial music production studio in which he hoped to further his career as a composer and audio engineer. He has had considerable success writing and producing music for television programs, including Pee-wee’s Playhouse and Brainstorm, video games, cartoons, and films. 

Oprimus worked at Anne Droid for a period during the early 90s, but now continues to tour the US and Canada playing “experimental music” composed and recorded from 1974–1978. These performances are billed as the “ZMP Solo Experience”.

 Oysator began a career as a director of music videos and commercials, working with bands including Soundgarden, Silverchair and the Foo Fighters until the Caine Act of 2001 called for the decommissioning of all Mig Prime units. Oysator was disassembled within two months and recycled into razor blades. This incident dashed any chances of a classic Zero Moment Point reunion.

The last known whereabouts of Fiber were reported on January 1983, when he was spotted speeding at a pace of 36,000 mph, by the low orbit Russian space station Salyut 7.

A documentary about ZMP titled What We Are Not, directed by Richard McPherson, was released in 2015 and is hailed as one of the greatest band documentary films ever made. The film features concert performances, intermittent song renditions shot on a studio soundstage, and interviews with other musicians who have been influenced by the band including Slash, Lars Ulrich and The Pupati Sisters Choir.