Purity Ring

你去年底看到Pitchfork的年度100首歌曲榜單，可能因為列表實在太長而忽略了Purity Ring的名字；當你隔著大洋讀今年SXSW的回顧，可能讀著英語的文字無法感受這個樂隊的現(xiàn)場究竟如何；但是當你發(fā)現(xiàn)微博上開始陸續(xù)有人提到這個名字，你可能隱約感受到，在大洋的對岸，這個樂隊已經(jīng)紅了。Purity Ring是由會點鋼琴的23歲女主唱Megan James和20歲的鼓手Corin Roddick組成的一個加拿大雙人樂隊。驚奇的人，兩個人平時其實不住在同一個城市，一個在蒙特利爾，一個哈里法克斯，所以他們幾乎所有的歌都是通過無數(shù)個郵件和電話完成的。 兩人在去年才發(fā)行了首支7寸單曲“Ungirthed”，隨后便迅速引起了像是Pitchfork之類媒體的注意。而在今年3月的SXSW前后，他們和Chad Valley、Grimes、Neon Indian 這樣已經(jīng)成名的藝人同臺演出，絲毫沒有怯場，給更多人留下了深刻的印象。因為同為女聲電子的關系，不少人拿他們和The Knife還有Crystal Castles相比，但在我看來，他們少了The Knife 北歐式的陰暗和冷酷，少了Crystal Castles的電子暴力感，而多了一份屬于自己的純凈和空靈。 樂隊首張專輯《Shrines》會在7月24日在4AD發(fā)行。或許，同廠牌的Gang Gang Dance和tUnE-yArDs才是他們更好的參照。
Purity Ring make lullabies for the club, drawing equally from airy 90s R&B, lush dream pop, and the powerful, bone-rattling immediacy of modern hip hop. Megan’s remarkable voice is at once ecstatic and ethereal, soaring joyfully through Corin’s carefully chopped beats, trembling synths, and skewed vocal samples.
Despite the band’s young age (Corin is 21, Megan 24) and short gestation (they formed in late 2010), Purity Ring have delivered one of 2012's most assured – and anticipated – debuts with Shrines. Indeed, Shrines feels like anything but a first record - its vocal hooks are inescapable, its lush production futuristic and sophisticated but also as pristine as anything on pop radio. The record's 11 tracks trace a unique aesthetic universe that is carefully crafted and fully realized - deftly walking the lines between trap-rap exhilaration and otherworldly rapture, pleasure-center pop and diaristic emotion, childlike dread and total self-possession. Purity Ring's is a universe that invites exploration and demands revisiting.
Corin & Megan grew up in and around Edmonton, Alberta where they were an integral part of that city's small, tight-knit all-ages DIY music community. They toured extensively together in the band Gobble Gobble (now Born Gold), with Corin on drums and Megan singing. In the midst of a six-month-long tour, Corin's love of R&B and hip-hop grew, and he began experimenting with beat-making in Ableton Live. He asked Megan to lay down vocals on a song called 'Ungirthed', and Purity Ring was born. The song made its way online in January of 2011 to immediate international acclaim, and thus the two were suddenly faced with the daunting task of turning a studio project into a real band. To meet the challenge, Megan and Corin spent nearly 6 months conceiving of a live show that could do justice to the unique music they were recording.
It shows. Every element of Purity Ring's live presence has been carefully considered — from the clothes they wear (all designed and handmade by expert stitcher Megan) to the tactile, hybrid musical instrument / lighting machine that Corin built himself. The resulting spectacle can't be overstated: infectious vocal leads chopped and screwed improvisationally, synth leads and lighting triggered live with a drummer's precision. Purity Ring's performance is a lived synaesthesia that transcends the pitfalls often associated with live electronic-based music. Of course, perhaps the most exciting thing about Purity Ring is the overriding sense that these live performance innovations and their exceptional debut Shrines are merely the beginning of a collaboration whose remarkable chemistry is sure to bear much more to come - future pop, in every sense of the phrase.