Album Review: Purity Ring - Shrines

It must be a little annoying to be an electronic artist from Montreal (or anywhere, really) at the moment, as Grimes takes over the world, one fluoro dye-job at a time, eclipsing a myriad lesser-known newcomers. But the success of this one artist belies the emergence of a bonafide subculture in which a contingent of musicians are relentlessly creating, Purity Ring among them. In recent interviews both Purity Ring and Grimes noted the existence of a movement: a subconscious vision nurtured by young and like-minded experimental artists, most prominently in Montreal, but also further afield. Purity Ring’s Megan James’ suggested the sound has in fact been brewing for some time: “there are definitely people we feel a kinship with because we’re all sort of doing similar things at the same time. I think it’s time this happened, in relation to all the things that have been happening in music in the past few years - there are a lot of cross-genre things that are being made and there are a lot of things going on in terms of that.” Described as ‘post internet’, this sound is entrenched in the socio-politics of today, and Purity Ring have taken it all and framed it in a specific, delightfully thematic way to create a solid and important debut album, Shrines.

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