Merk God

In exciting news, we are thrilled to once again be working with Humblebrag Records to promote the new single 'God' from the imitable New Zealand artist and producer Merk.

Merk is the musical moniker of Auckland, New Zealand artist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mark Perkins who began his career as a touring member of Tom Lark and Fazerdaze before releasing his debut album Swordfish in 2017.

He earned acclaim with his 2020 single "H.N.Y.B" and he now unveils the utopic new "GOD" single/video that was premiered last night on Triple R's 'Out On The Patio' with Holly Periera. 'GOD' is strapped with a disco-indebted synth line, skittering percussion, bouncing bass and repetitive mantra-esque lyrics that promise much more to come from this creative mastermind.

Speaking on the creation of the single, Merk had this to say:
"Songwriting has a sneaky way of revealing to me my feelings long before I am aware of them," shares Merk. "'GOD' is an example of a song that did just that. When writing 'GOD' I thought I was in full irony mode, I was trying to make a cool song out of potentially the least cool thing one could sing about. It's kinda weird, but in my head I had this image of an anthropological A.I. or something looking at the whole history of mankind and wondering what "God" was. It wasn't until well into the songwriting process I realised that as tongue in cheek as I was being, I was also being entirely earnest. At the time I was doing a big deconstruction of my childhood growing up around religion and trying to figure out what it was I myself believe. It also coincided with a particularly low point in my life, and the sweet resignation that comes with the feeling that things couldn't get any worse; a peaceful feeling that at least nothing can hurt you when you're at the bottom!"

To celebrate the release of this absolute woozy banger, Merk also shares a 'Day In The Life' feature on SPIN Magazine. Check in on Merk's day to day in this unreal insight into Merk's creative world.

The video for 'GOD' was self-directed & edited alongside Martin Sagadin who has previously directed videos for Aldous Harding & Marlon Williams.  

On the conception of the video, Merk explains:

"During one of the lockdowns I became a bit obsessed with video glitch art. There is a super cool online community of people who take old 80s video equipment and circuit bend them into these weird video FX units. After talking with a few of them and getting their advice I found an old CRT TV and some video synths and decided to recreate the GOD video by destroying our super high quality footage and filming the TV as it ran through this old outdated gear."

Merk learned the craft of recording and producing under the stewardship of Crowded House's (and now Fleetwood Mac's!) Neil Finn while working at Roundhead Studios. His debut album Swordfish went on to win Best Debut Album at the Taite Music Prize (New Zealand's equivalent of the Mercury or Polaris Prize), and led to tours with Cub Sport, Marlon Williams and Julia Jacklin in Australia and New Zealand.