PURPLE PILGRIMS
New Zealand sister-duo Purple Pilgrims share haunting video for “Sensing Me”
UK and European tour dates announced
New album Perfumed Earth out now via Flying Nun
New Zealand sister-duo Purple Pilgrims have shared new visuals for ‘Sensing Me‘, a track from Perfumed Earth, which was released earlier this year via Flying Nun. The band have also announced a run of UK and EU tour dates for January 2020 (see below).
The band explained the song: “’Sensing Me’ is a Love Magic incantation and telepathic ritual. Through hyperbolic emotional shorthand we regard the grey area between love and obsession, fantasy and reality. A claustrophobic dream of elation, desperation, regret and double meanings. The video was directed by the wonderful W.A.M Bleakley and shot on 16mm Kodak film. The characters become more and more disarrayed as internal clashes overwhelm them – becoming divided within and against themselves, and ultimately disembodied. When psychological boarders on supernatural – both tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious all at the same time.”
Purple Pilgrims come back into focus for the first time since their 2016 record Eternal Delight, with the duo aiming to continue to create “folks songs played on synthesised instruments”. The album was also Bandcamp‘s ‘Album of the Day’.
Listen to Perfumed Earth
https://purplepilgrims.bandcamp.com/album/perfumed-earth
UK and EU tour dates
Tuesday 14th January – Shacklewell Arms, London
Wednesday 15th January – The Crofter’s Rights, Bristol
Thursday 16th January – Broadcast, Glasgow
Friday 17th January – Tunnels 1, Aberdeen
Saturday 18th January – Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh
Sunday 19th January – YES Basement, Manchester
Monday 20th January – Coventry, The Tin at the Coal Vaults
Wednesday 22nd January – Het Bos, Antwerp, Belgium
Thursday 23rd January – Willem Twee, Den Bosch, Netherlands
Friday 24th January – Podium Asteriks, Leeuwarden Netherlands
Saturday 25th January – PåTaget, Odense, Denmark
Monday 27th January – Støberiet, Copenhagen, Denmark
Tuesday 28th January – Koloni, Göteborg, Sweden
Wednesday 29th January – Sörängen, Nässjö, Sweden
Thursday 30th January – Favela, Helsingborg, Sweden
Friday 31st January – Northern Winter Beats Festival, Aalborg, Denmark
Saturday 1st February – Tøjhuset, Fredericia, Denmark
Sunday 2nd February – West Germany, Berlin, Germany
Monday 3rd February – Tsunami Club, Köln, Germany
Tuesday 4th February – Botanique, Bruxelles, Belgium
Wednesday 5th February – L’International, Paris, France
Thursday 6th February – La Bulle Cafe, Lille, France
Friday 7th February – Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate
Saturday 8th February – Hotbox, Chelmsford
Praise for the band:
“Purple Pilgrims abandon not only modern society, but the 21st century altogether, delivering tragic tales of gothic romance with light, ethereal vocals…” – Bandcamp
“…manages to make isolation seem more beautiful than terrifying by playing loosely with structure…” – Pitchfork
“…ethereal & blissful…” – NOISEY
“An altogether more soothing soundtrack for the days to come…” – The Quietus
“the duo’s soaring voices capture a mood of nervy euphoria” – Loud & Quiet
“Perfumed Earth is often hypnotic, marked by moments of nuance that reward a close listen.” – Loud & Quiet
“Dreamy, shoegazin’ folk-pop…” – Uncut
“…Evocative and expressive…” – Clash
New Zealand sisters Valentine and Clementine Nixon aka Purple Pilgrims refer to Perfumed Earth, their sublime second full-length – and first for historic indie Flying Nun – as “kind of like a rebirth.”
The duo retreated to the same wooded sanctuary studio in the wilds of Tapu where they tracked their 2016 debut, Eternal Delight, but this time in a calmer, more contemplative headspace: “internal white noise subsided and we really started to appreciate the peace of our environment.”
Aided, too, by a vaster cast of collaborators, they fashioned “a very modern/mobile band,” combining local recordings with inspired long-distance overdubs. Frequent ally Gary War contributed bass and synth from various American motel rooms while on tour with John Maus; lush live drums came courtesy of lauded Lorde keyboardist Jimmy Mac, ex-Surf City guitarist Joshua Kennedy layered in additional tiers of jangle and fuzz; veteran improvisational experimentalist Jeff Henderson cameos with subtle arcs of saxophone on the divine ‘Delphiniums In Harmony / Two Worlds Away’; and even legendary six-string expressionist Roy Montgomery makes a guest appearance, weaving tendrils of heavenly electricity within one of the album’s darkest highlights “Ruinous Splendour.” The results were then mixed in Mount Eden, Auckland, with engineer Thomas Healy, utilising his sizable collection of vintage tape machines, arriving at a sound both spacious and sensual, swooning and spellbound.
Certain songs rank among the most proper enchantress pop yet ventured in the Purple Pilgrims canon, while others shimmer with more veiled kaleidoscopic textures, yet taken as a whole Perfumed Earth presents a persuasive evolutionary step forward. The sisters intertwined voices soar, seduce, and slowdive, radiating rich spectrums of archetypal experience: journeys, longing, homecomings. Theirs is a unique nexus of paradise and isolation, beauty and blankness, ritual and the right now; or as they phrase it: “ancient imagery expressed through a modern lens – folks songs played on synthesized instruments.”
http://www.purplepilgrims.net/
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