Mister Lies is the product of dorm-room insomnia, the development of a family of friends in a city of strangers under altered states and the feeling of homesickness for places where one only feels homesick.

It is also the operational alias for a 20-year-old producer, multi-instrumentalist and feral child who was raised by wolves in the forests of a Connecticut suburb. Somewhere down the road, those winds whisked him away and dropped him off in Chicago.

In the harshest parts of winter in the Windy City; equipped with a laptop, several controllers and whatever instruments were lying around his congested dorm-room; he released his first EP anonymously before eventually revealing his identity as Nick Zanca.

Before long these atmospheric, nocturnal tracks started making rounds. After many months away, Zanca revisited his New England roots with a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s written work and a carload of microphones, synthesizers and samplers and camped out at a cabin on a lake in Vermont.

Zanca’s debut full-length MOWGLI, out on Lefse Records in early 2013, is the eight-track result of that meditation and soul-searching – an aggressive hunt for self-awareness and feral youth.