“Join us in welcoming Purity Ring to our Friday, 10/25 lineup at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena!” Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit organizers just posted on Facebook. The Canadian dream-pop duo (Megan James and Corin Roddick) replace Tricky on the festival’s Friday night lineup.
Purity Ring is also the final announcement in a string of band replacements. The new recruits include Adventure Club (Sunday, 6 p.m. at ExploreAsheville.com Arena), Amerigo Gazaway (Friday, 11 p.m. at Asheville Music Hall) and Cashmere Cat (Saturday, 9:15 p.m. at Asheville Music Hall).
In January of this year, Purity Ring performed a lush set at The Orange Peel, underscored by an ethereal light show: “The light setup involves interactive lamps of a sort on a table. These have touch sensors and are ‘played’ with a stick, sending a signal to the synthesizer that tells the lamp to pulse or glow. Then, behind the band, a forest of cocoons suspended from arched metal stems rises. These, too, glow at certain points — at the Orange Peel it was near the end of the set.
“The lights are part of what makes Purity Ring’s show a spectacle. But James and Roddick, even without visuals, craft a huge sound. Much of the effect comes from James’s vocal — her voice is pure, high and snowy-cool. At moments she seems to dissolve into the machine-produced smoke. If freezing fog had a soundtrack, this would be it.”
Read the full show review here.
Band photo by London Speers
