New Zealand dream-pop duo Purple Pilgrims announce their third studio album, Given To The Night, due for release on 27th November via AD 93, alongside the release of its first single, the mesmerising Innocence Lost.
Comprised of sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon, Purple Pilgrims have spent years developing a distinctive sonic world built from shimmering guitars, entwined synthesizers, analogue textures and expansive vocal arrangements. Their music has an otherworldly quality, yet Given To The Night finds the duo turning further inward, exploring personal transition, uncertainty and the possibility of finding light within darkness.
Purple Pilgrims
Innocence Lost offers an atmospheric introduction to the forthcoming record. Dreamy and slow-burning, the track unfolds like a half-remembered dream, its layers gradually revealing themselves beneath the sisters’ intertwining vocals. It is a song about heartbreak and the inevitability of loss that accompanies love, but ultimately one that searches for hope within sorrow.
The duo describe their songs as messages from their future selves, with their meaning sometimes only becoming apparent long after the recording has been completed. Innocence Lost is particularly reflective of that process, capturing the feeling of standing in darkness while sensing that something is glowing just beyond view.
Night becomes a recurring metaphor throughout Given To The Night, representing both mystery and possibility and the freedom that can come with stepping away from the glare of everyday life. The album’s title itself carries a dual meaning: being drawn towards the night and its protective shadows, or surrendering to it completely and allowing fear to dissolve.
That sense of surrender is central to the way the album was created. Rather than beginning with a predetermined concept or narrative, Clementine and Valentine followed instinct, recording songs as they emerged. “We recorded songs as they appeared, which sometimes felt like catching light,” the sisters explain. “Before we realised it we had a record.”
The pair deliberately retreated from the outside world during the album’s creation, deleting their social media accounts and withdrawing into the trees of their native New Zealand. Only a small number of people were invited into the recording process, allowing Purple Pilgrims to develop the album within an unusually intimate environment.
The resulting record moves between dream and reality, day and night, clarity and confusion. Guitar lines drift through hazy spaces while synths intertwine with tape hiss and layered vocals, creating a constantly shifting sonic landscape. Rather than following a conventional emotional arc, Given To The Night mirrors the nonlinear nature of lived experience. Isolation can give way to joy, insomnia to manic highs, confusion to moments of clarity, while grief and healing exist alongside one another.
The sisters describe the album as emerging from a period of personal transition, with the songs reflecting an ongoing search for light within the shadows. It is an approach that gives the record a deeply human quality while retaining the mysterious, transcendental atmosphere that has become central to Purple Pilgrims’ work.
Across its 11 tracks, Given To The Night moves from the newly released ‘Innocence Lost’ through songs including Outside, Look To The Moon, Angel (Passing Through This Scene), Love Arrived, Echo and Wherever You Go, There You Are, before closing with Unseen. The album follows Purple Pilgrims’ evolution from experimental performers into increasingly accomplished songwriters. Clementine and Valentine, who were raised between New Zealand and Hong Kong, initially developed their sound while performing in underground gallery spaces and abandoned industrial venues across Hong Kong.
Those early performances combined experimental noise with futuristic dream-pop, providing the foundation for the more expansive music they would go on to create. Over successive releases, the sisters have refined their approach to songwriting while retaining the experimental spirit of their beginnings.
Their music continues to balance familiar song structures with a sense of sonic discovery, bringing together analogue textures, shimmering guitars, synthesizers and richly layered vocals. The result is music that feels simultaneously timeless and distinctly their own. The duo have also collaborated with artists including New Zealand’s The Chills and Roy Montgomery, further connecting their music to the country’s rich alternative and experimental tradition.
With Given To The Night, Purple Pilgrims appear ready to embrace the uncertainty at the heart of their music rather than resolve it. The album’s world is one of shadows and illumination, solitude and connection, where moments of sorrow can coexist with wonder and hope.
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