The Tin & Sink or Swim present – Clementine Valentine (FKA Purple Pilgrims) + Constant Smiles
21/02/2024
7:30 pm - 11:00 pm
£12.50adv (+ booking fee)
Sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon make 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, performing experimental noise and futuristic dream-pop under the moniker Purple Pilgrims.
The duo have since toured the world extensively alongside the likes of Ariel Pink, Aldous Harding, John Maus, and Weyes Blood. It’s a lifestyle embedded in their lineage; travelling 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).
While their prior works were self-produced and released via cult underground labels, the sisters have steadily refined their craft into a more fully realized and sophisticated new sound. They now perform under their birth names, and have begun collaborating with world-renowned musicians and producers – from producer Randall Dunn (Oneohtrix Point Never, Danny Elfman, Jim Jarmusch) to legendary drummer Matt Chamberlain (David Bowie, Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple). The Coin that Broke the Fountain Floor marks a pivotal moment in the creative evolution of Clementine and Valentine Nixon – regal and richly layered, shimmering and softly orchestral, an accumulation of songcraft stretching back centuries.
Over the last half decade, the music collective Constant Smiles has produced a prolific output of acclaimed music, culminating in their forthcoming record Kenneth Anger, masterfully brought to life by engineer Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Liars, Dougie Pool). The group is known most recently for their much-praised debut album for Sacred Bones records, Paragons, an emotionally resonant offering of indie folk masterpieces that all confront the internal ways we process our struggles with intimacies, addiction and humanity – produced by Ben Greenberg.
Constant Smiles, led by Ben Jones, began in 2009 on his home of Martha’s Vineyard, inspired by the music scene centered around the island’s now defunct community record store, Aboveground Records. They made their live debut as a noise duo opening for Ralph White (Bad Livers) and, working in series, began churning out homemade releases influenced by friends, art film icons, and fellow musicians.
In the time since, Constant Smiles have amassed a discography a couple dozen releases deep, containing contributions from more than 50 members of its extended family. Along the way, the group has shared stages with Molly Nilsson, Black Marble, Oneida, Editrix, Frank Hurricane, Olden Yolk, and Purple Pilgrims; their shows are endlessly unique experiences for which Jones has a tendency of writing whole set’s worth of new material.
Location
The Tin At The Coal Vaults
