Merk Questions His Religious Upbringing In New Single “GOD”
Taite Music Prize-winning (think Polaris Music or Mercury Prize) musician Mark Perkins, who performs as Merk, allowed himself to get lost within the digital world for his new single “GOD”. The Auckland, New Zealand-based indie pop act wanted to find a balance between light-hearted and non-ironically sincere as he challenged his religious upbringing.
“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”, Perkins shares. 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!”
The song’s lo-fi, ’80’s aesthetic and sound contributes to its middle ground between experimental and organic, as Merk’s atmospheric vocals asks about the alleged creator, coming to a climax during the song’s pre-finale ballad.
The music video was self-directed and edited alongside Martin Sagadin, and Merk shares, “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to recreate the GOD video by destroying our super high quality footage and filming the TV as it ran through this old outdated gear.”
Slip into the glitchy matrix below and stay tuned for more news on Merk’s forthcoming album this year.
