Clementine Valentine, FKA Purple Pilgrims, recently dropped “Time and Tide,” a track off their forthcoming album, The Coin that Broke the Fountain Floor, available August 25th, 2023 via Flying Nun Records imprint. The duo collaborated producer Randall Dunn (Oneohtrix Point Never, Danny Elfman, Zola Jesus, SQÜRL) to transpose their keyboard-and-guitar demos to cello, pedal steel, 12-string guitar, and a gallery of vintage synthesizers. Percussion was provided by drummer Matt Chamberlain (David Bowie, Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple). Final audio finessing came courtesy of Brooklyn mastering engineer Heba Kadry (Bjork, Beach House, Slowdive).

Clementine and Valentine share the following about “Time and Tide”: “We thought we were only capable of writing sad songs – but found optimism creeping in during the writing of this album. Without ruining the mystery, ‘Time and Tide’’ is about the release that comes in too brief moments of relinquishing overthinking, fret and regret. It’s coloured with melancholy, but cheerful by our measure.”

Clementine and Valentine Nixon, the duo makes music drawn from nomadic family heritage that conjures unique moods of contrasts: ancient and modern, paradise and isolation, beauty and brokenness, ritual and the right now. Raised itinerantly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the sisters cut their teeth performing in renegade gallery spaces and rogue music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial estates, previously performing experimental noise and futuristic dream-pop under the moniker Purple Pilgrims.

The flag has changed names, and colors, but there is still a sense of pilgrimage to these songs. Traveling across nations and generations to the heart of family trees seeded by love and devotion, melody and mythology.

The duo have since toured the world extensively alongside Aldous Harding and Weyes Blood. It’s a lifestyle embedded in their lineage; traveling musicians and performers go back hundreds of years on their maternal side (as documented on recordings such as The Travelling Stewarts, from 1968). As children, the sisters were taught to sing traditional balladry by their grandmother, daughter of revered Traveller musician Davie Stewart (later recorded by Alan Lomax).

Clementine Valentine
em>The Coin that Broke the Fountain Floor
Tracklisting
Flying Nun Records

1.Gatekeeper
2.All I See
3.Time and Tide
4.The Understudy
5.Selenelion
6.The Rope
7.Endless Night
8.Actors Tears
9.All Yesterdays Flowers

Pre-order HERE