Purple Pilgrims – Look To The Moon

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 AD 93.

Today, they share the record’s third single “Look to the Moon”, described by the band as “a mantra, a sisterly love song — a communion with the universe, an anthemic prayer”. It arrives alongside a music video directed by Britt Walton.

The new album 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. Thus far, they’ve shared two singles off the record: “Innocence Lost”, which explores the harsh consequences of love amid meticulously layered vocals and swooning guitar, and “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.

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 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.

Sat Dec 5  – TĀMAKIi MAKAURAU / AUCKLAND, NZ – Kāhui St David’s

w/ Schofield Strangelove (Playing a Rare Set) [Strange Universe Fest]

Fri Dec 11 – TE WHANGANUI-A-TARA / WELLINGTON, NZ – Vogelmorn Hall

w/ Mercury Fèng 

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