Zen Mantra

Biography

Zen Mantra is the bedroom project of Sam Perry, a Christchurch-born singer, songwriter, and producer. Perry began making music as a teenager, writing and recording the debut album How Many Padmes Hum? over approximately a year, primarily between school classes, using digital MIDI production for drums, bass, synth, and percussion before recording guitars and vocals separately. The record was picked up by UK label Stroll On Records after Perry posted the track ‘La La La La La’ on SoundCloud. He described his approach at the time as aiming for a “male-led Summer of Love girl group” sound, drawing on Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, David Byrne, and Christopher Owens rather than any specific genre.

The track ‘Fossils’, dedicated to his late father Bill Perry, appeared across both that debut and subsequent releases, establishing a vein of personal grief running through the project’s catalogue. Perry later toured internationally as a member of Yumi Zouma, an experience that fed directly into the writing of the self-titled 2016 album on Flying Nun Records — written over three years and drawing on falling in love before an extended tour, his father’s death, and time spent recording in London and Melbourne alongside hardware synthesisers from Germany’s groove-based psych scene.

I wanted to make something that felt like a pop record, but with an underlying sense of dissonance. Something that for the most part is quite energetic and rhythm heavy, but without forgoing any atmospheric qualities.
Sam Perry, Radio Trails

Perry prioritised emotional atmosphere over narrative, processing guitar through tape machines and pedal boards to build textural soundscapes, and later experimenting with analogue synthesisers. “I needed distance from my emotions to properly articulate them,” he told RNZ’s The Wireless. The self-titled album, featuring the tracks ‘Bailey’ and ‘Second Skin’, was his most polished and direct statement of that approach.