Perfumed Earth is dream-like and nightmare-like in equal measure. There is both a reality and an irreality here, a combination of the natural and the fabricated that speaks more in tune to our own existence than we would most likely be comfortable to admit. After all, art should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed.
This is an album to both haunt and heal the listener, much like the alcohol burn of a sniff of Eau de whatever. Something you can relax and repent to, enjoy but feel claustrophobic in. Throughout, there’s a disassociation with structure. The voices rise and fall, the guitars lackadaisically chime up and pipe down – in and out of the mix – and synths ride out their notes for as long as humanly possible. It’s all like a creepy and slowed down merry-go-round, weird and wonderful, familiar but unsettling.
Though strange, this creates a new perspective. By breaking structures everything natural or unnatural, artificial or biological, electronic or acoustic, becomes entirely insignificant. The music is ethereal, and in its surreality, you can still feel a sense of realism.
I know that sounds like some arty bullshit, but by the end, the whole thing created something reminiscent of the climax to Nick Cave’s One More Time With Feeling, if you’ve seen it? As Purple Pilgrims escape expectations in their music, like the camera escapes the room and atmosphere in One More Time, we are met with the same realisation. Life goes on and that everything else is seldom important.
Haiku Review
Irreality
giving you new perspective,
a daydream nightmare,
