Purple Pilgrims – the New Zealand-based dream-pop duo composed of sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon – will share their forthcoming third album, Given to the Night, on November 27 via Flying Nun Records.
They have shared the record’s newest single ‘Outside‘ — a melodic yet melancholic beauty, reminiscent of the trickling, cyclical environment the sisters placed themselves within to make the record, on an off grid retreat in the NZ countryside.
Says the band:
“Last year I felt dead inside, now I’m feeling so alive / Looking from the outside in, again”.
“This song is an ode to outsiders. A term that once felt heavy, now feels like an anointed privilege.
Relishing a space of one’s own. The feeling of putting on headphones and walking through the world – of it and others at the same time – is a sacred space that most of us can relate to, we think.
From that space, ‘Outside’ ponders some fairly existential feelings in passing – from all of our beginnings as pure energy, where and how could we transcend beyond.
How isolating it is to go/grow through something transitional – how it is beautiful too, when broken down into quantum forms.”
In full, Given to the Night translates Purple Pilgrims’ signature kaleidoscopic sound via telepathic sibling connection, focusing on introspective themes of finding light in shadows, and exploring the in-betweens. The record’s previous single ‘Innocence Lost‘ (released September 6) explored the harsh consequences of love amid meticulously layered vocals and swooning guitar.
Purple Pilgrims – Outside (Visualiser)
Truths and secrets often reveal themselves at night, under the freedom of shadowy darkness, away from prying eyes. In creating Given to the Night, sisters Valentine and Clementine Nixon have crafted a world that drifts through the in-between: between dream and reality, between day and night and the undefined, and, ultimately, a world that embraces the discomfort of being untethered. It came to be in a process that followed simplicity and intuition, rather than pre-determined narratives: “We recorded songs as they appeared, which sometimes felt like catching light. Before we realised it we had a record”, the duo explain.
While making the record, Valentine and Clementine gently pushed away from the world – deleted social media, retreated into the trees of their native New Zealand, and only inviting a couple of people in during the recording process. From that space, the album came together in an eerily easeful way.
There is a dream-like drift and sonic timelessness to the the record, as reflected in its nocturnal title, which can be read in two ways: “Being taken by, or being inclined towards nighttime, preferring its blurry cloak of shadows to the harsh light of day; or giving oneself up to night, in sacrifice, letting go of fear and melting into the darkness.”
Written during a time of personal transition there was “a sense of finding the light in the shadow” they add. Guitar lines float, synth lines entwine, tapes hiss, and vocals stream creating a kaleidoscopic montage of transient memories and emotions. A spectrum of feelings arise — isolation and joy, insomnia and manic highs, confusion and fleeting clarity, grief and healings. In the record, these feelings all merge and fade into one another in a nonlinear manner, as life tends to do; creating something deeply human that simultaneously gestures towards the transcendental.
Purple Pilgrims’ new album Given to the Night is due out November 27 via Flying Nun Records – find more information and pre-order HERE.
They will celebrate the record with two special New Zealand release shows in December: on Saturday December 5 at Kāhui St David’s w/ Schofield Strangelove (playing a rare set) for Strange Universe Fest in Auckland and on Friday December 11 at Vogelmorn Hall with Mercury Fèng in Wellington. Find more information HERE.
Purple Pilgrims
Given to the Night
Given to the Night out 27 November via Flying Nun Records
Pre-Order/Pre-Save HERE
Tracklist
1. Innocence Lost
2. Outside
3. Look to the Moon
4. Angel (Passing through this Scene)
5. Love Arrived
6. Echo
7. Wherever You Go, There You Are
8. Receive
9. Windows
10. Universal Love
11. Unseen
ABOUT PURPLE PILGRIMS
As Purple Pilgrims, Clementine and Valentine Nixon make music that is at once classic and wholly idiosyncratic. Raised between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the sisters began performing in subterranean gallery spaces and music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial estates, with sets of experimental noise and futuristic dream-pop.
Over time, and a number of acclaimed cult releases, Purple Pilgrims have refined their song crafting abilities – building worlds of analog texture, tapestries of shimmering guitars and synths, and expansively layered vocals with an unmistakable air of familial telepathy.
Touted as New Zealand’s answer to haze-pop pioneers like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins – their music is infused with a uniquely Antipodean essence, evident in their collaborations with Flying Nun greats The Chills and Roy Montgomery.
The sisters have headlined tours globally, and alongside the likes of Ariel Pink, Aldous Harding, Gary War, John Maus and Weyes Blood.
PURPLE PIGRIMS ONLINE
