It’s a potent return from the New Zealand aesthete…Sheep, Dog & Wolf is a project driven by a deeply personal relationship between music and the psyche.
To this New Zealand songwriter, each note is a message from his soul to the world, building into something truly intoxicating.
His debut album ‘Egospect’ was a sublime mixture of opaque R&B and highly personal lyricism, resulting in a truly bold statement.
Earning a shortlisted place on 2014’s Taite Prize – essentially New Zealand’s Mercury – it became a cult object, something fans would press upon their friends in sincere recommendation.
New album ‘Two Minds’ finds Sheep, Dog & Wolf progressing into new bounds, using music as a means to unpick issues in his own life.
He comments: “The album was written during a period of chronic physical and mental illness; it’s a document of that time. But I still see Two-Minds as a positive statement – it’s about recovery as much as it is about illness, and about the shafts of light that could shine through even in the depths of it.”
The title track is out now, and it’s a beautiful evocation of the need to walk towards positivity, a yearning for new light.
The visuals lean on the surreal, using unsettling imagery to knock the viewer on to the back foot, all while depicting the impact of mental illness.
He continues: “I felt paralysed by it, limited by it, pulled apart by it – but simultaneously dependent on it. The music video takes the anxiety at the root of this conflict and makes it manifest; it pursues me, antagonises me, but in the end it only seems to want to protect me – albeit in a way that’s more disturbing than any attack. To me, this video feels like an anxiety dream playing out in the real world, like a panic attack put to film.”
Tune in now.
‘Two-Minds’ will be released on February 19th via Aphrodite.
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