Zen Mantra shares ‘Second Skin’ + Announces Debut LP
Today, Zen Mantra (Sam Perry) releases the lead-single Second Skin off the forthcoming self-titled album, out April 15 on Flying Nun Records.
The track premiered here on Gorilla vs Bear, who praise Sam Perry’s pop sensibility, describing Second Skin as “a warped and woozy first single” that “elicits an eerie nostalgia and the inescapable tinge of vague melancholy…”
Following on from his 2013 debut album How Many Padmes Hum, Perry’s 10-track sophomore album sees the 21-year old bedroom producer 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 across various transient spaces while touring – planes, trains, homes and hotel rooms around the world.
With an ear for gleaming pop melody, Perry brings a discomfiting twist to the essential pop form, the aforementioned melancholic thread ensuring his dark lyrical content isn’t lost amongst comparisons to guitar-heavy summer jams.
With much of the album’s inspiration coming from the German 1960s/70s underground and the UK psych scene circa 1980 (fun fact: the name Zen Mantra was taken from some of Sonic Boom’s liner notes), Zen Mantra has a pure pop energy, an expansive sound and plenty of hooks.
Perry elaborates: “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.”
Yet it’s not all warm and blissful, with the album’s darker themes at times brilliantly warping these bedroom pop songs. Leaving the listener with the slight sense of unease, like a sombre psych pop record you found lying melted out under the sun.
