Purity Ring

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Purity Ring’s self-titled fourth album marks the beginning of a bold new chapter. Long known for their fusion of body horror imagery and ethereal electronics, the duo now shift their focus from the physical to the fantastical, crafting a concept album that serves as the soundtrack to an imagined RPG. Inspired by games like Nier Automata and Final Fantasy X, the record tells the story of two hapless characters — embodiments of mj and Corin — on a journey to build a kinder world amid the ruins of a broken one. But this is no escapist fantasy: it is the first step of forbidden dreaming, of imagining a place where the vulnerable are heeded, where grief is spoken aloud and held collectively, where family is a verb rather than a noun, where hope and home can bloom together. 

Purity Ring is the most expansive the duo has ever sounded. Corin reaches into his deepest musical memories to sculpt euphoric, otherworldly soundscapes of vintage digital synths, classical guitar, pan flutes, breakbeats, and haunted vocoders. Along with her unmistakable presence, mj has unlocked a new arsenal of vocal deliveries and a joyous, dizzying stream of consciousness in her words. When a loved one became newly disabled, mj became a full-time caregiver, an experience that continues to expose the world’s inadequacies and fuels her vision of a better one. 

mj’s voice begins piercing and shrouded through a vocoder as she calmly delivers a message from somewhere far, far away. “Hope is a seed I found you tending.” “Nobody is coming to save us”, she warns as she drifts through a skeletal soundscape. 

“many lives” opens to an array of choral layers—reminiscent of Kenji Kawai’s Ghost in the Shell soundtrack—woven into holographic digital keyboards, high-tempo breakbeats, and a flowing current of vocals threaded with haunted vocoders, mj welcomes you into the ruins. ‘house of a dream, walk into me’, ‘leave me behind, within between below’. Knowing what it is to be left behind, she beatifically floats through on a river of otherworldly sound. 

In “place of my own” (pomo), we find ourselves dancing in a pitch black cave, and then in the middle of the ocean – ‘all i want is a place of my own, some way to be alone’. a spell that is also a dream over the blissful synth melodies that have become a signature of Corin’s sound, we feel the depth of mj’s yearning as she takes us to a series of disappearing places: ‘come find me where the ocean’s gleaming off the sky… come find me where the cliffside calls – we’re out of time.’ We follow to the ellipses of this world, places that are slowly fading out of view on a burning planet. 

“the long night” pulls us into the pulse of a steady heartbeat that comforts us through a storm. words ring out as though from another plane: ‘I’ve been blacking out but I will come back changed.’ An ominous promise hangs in the air like a prophecy. ‘Play my dreams for omens.’ If only all dreams were so darkly euphoric. 

In “imanocean” the band takes a left turn into a new reverie where otherworldly anime scores and 90s rock effortlessly co-exist. mj relates a surreal and unpleasant conversation: ‘wake up wake up you’ve been talking now for hours’. As she escapes into the chorus with carefree abandon, we feel the epiphany of seeing things as they are for the first time: ‘I wanna feel this for the rest of my life, I am an ocean where the tears fall from the sky…’ a place of melancholy yet brimming with hope. 

On “glacier”, a song written in memory of artist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, the band calls a close to the journey they’ve taken us on. ‘everything changes in the end’ mj affirms.

As always, the band’s visuals feel deeply seeded in the sound of the record. For this release, they’ve collaborated with fellow Canadian Mike Sunday to develop an imaginary place — one shaped by many of the same inspirations that influenced Corin’s production along with the narrative of mj’s poetry. Together with Sunday, they’ve crafted a sensory landscape that visually brings the album’s story to life. Purity Ring’s kaleidoscopic new live show is also built on this surreal landscape, immersing fans in this world alongside them. 

On their fourth album Purity Ring, the Canadian duo explore creative frontiers that are brand new to them yet profoundly self-actualizing. This is a record about letting go, embracing change, and dreaming forward into something freer.