Purity Ring is a Halifax/Montreal-based duo comprised of Corin Roddick and Megan James. The band 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. Corin & Megan grew up in and around Edmonton, Alberta where they were an integral part of the 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.
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. Megan's remarkable voice is at once ecstatic and ethereal, soaring joyfully through Corin's carefully chopped beats, trembling synths, and skewed vocal samples. Their live performance innovations and their exceptional debut are the beginning of a collaboration whose remarkable chemistry is sure to bear much more to come.
This album is future pop, in every sense of the phrase.