MERK Shares new single & video 'Laps Around The Sun' & Announces new album 'Infinite Youth' out 9th April 2021
Today we are excited to announce the second single 'Laps Around The Sun' from Merk's forthcoming album 'Infinite Youth' which will be released on April 9th. The track and video were premiered on Clash Magazine overnight HERE
"Laps Around The Sun' is a deft, sincere piece of songwriting, with Merk's heart-on-sleeve approach resulting in an incredibly endearing track."
After releasing the first single 'GOD' earlier this year, Merk continues to satiate Australian audiences with the release the new single and self produced video for 'Laps Around The Sun'.
Merk is the solo project of New Zealand songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Perkins, which began when Perkins recorded 2016’s Swordfish (winner of Best Debut at the Taite Music Prize).
Listen to 'Laps Around The Sun' HERE
Speaking on the new single, Merk had this to say:
"This song is about finding poetry in the mundane, repetitiveness of life. It was written on my birthday, which is also Valentine's Day. I was struggling with the existential dread that can come on your birthday, you know, that lovely internal dialogue that goes “everything is meaningless and so am I” sorta thing. This is a reflection on the idea that, sure, maybe everything is equally meaningless but doesn’t that also mean everything is just as meaningful as the next thing? Which is kinda cool. A jellybean or Jupiter matter just the same. Whether you are waiting for the weekend or celebrating another lap around the sun, or falling in and out of love or doing the dishes there’s beauty to be found in the never-ending repetitions and rhythms of life."
The video for 'Laps Around The Sun' was self-directed & edited by Merk and collaborators Abbey Egdenand Martin Sagadin.
Of the video Merk says:
"By sheer coincidence we ended up filming the video on my birthday too, so it was natural for it to become about that. We made it very guerilla style with a small crew of friends, it felt super wholesome and very meta."
On his new album Infinite Youth, Merk examines the blurry line between adolescence and adulthood, and all the clarity and mess that accompanies that blurring. This is a record that thrives on a certain simplicity of rhythm, melody, and lyric, and is compelled by contrast: pop songs influenced by art music, an album about adulthood that reflects heavily on what it is to be young, and a sonic world that is both expansive and deeply intimate.
While first album Swordfish introduced many of the qualities that Merk continues to cultivate, it’s on Infinite Youth that he comes fully into his own. “In the past it felt like I was hiding, but now I’m trying to wear my heart on my sleeve a little more,” Perkins muses.
He has an understated, commanding presence, a playful intensity, as well as an ability to simply let go. Lyrically, this album treads a line between earnest, vulnerable, and knowingly tongue in cheek: songs that began in irony mutated into sincerity, and vice versa.
You can catch Merk playing straight to your screens for SXSW Online Music Festival this March.
'Laps Around The Sun' is Merk’s second single from album 'Infinite Youth' out worldwide via Humblebrag Records April 9th 2021. Pre order the album HERE.