Christchurch's Zen Mantra has shared the first single, 'Second Skin' off his upcoming self-titled sophomore album.
Premiering over on Gorilla vs Bear, 'Second Skin' is a piece of warped and woozy psych pop from Flying Nun Records latest signing. Check it out here:
Following on from his 2013 debut album How Many Padmes Hum the 10-track album sees the 21-year old bedroom producer, Sam Perry, expanding his focus to incorporate all forms of pop music from ethereal shoegaze to walls of psychedelic distortion. Perry, who is also a member of Yumi Zouma,wrote and recorded much of it by himself in various planes, trains, homes and hotel rooms around the world whilst on tour with them.
Perry explains that the new record;
“....was written over the course of the last three or so years, and thus it covers a lot of emotional ground for me – I practically spent half of my teenage years writing it and grew up a lot in the process…Years went by, years spent finishing high school, falling in love, touring the world for the first time and coping with the sudden death of my father, my relationships changed, my relationship to music changed – I scrapped a few records, and the one I ended up finishing got bent severely out of shape.
When I started out making music I wanted everything to sound huge. My ideal sound was ambient, polished, compressed, driving and loaded with hooks. Some kind of blissful, stadium sized psych-pop project. In the end I wanted to make something that felt like a pop record, but with an underlying sense of dissonance. Something that for most part is quite energetic and rhythm heavy, but without forgoing any atmospheric qualities.”