Pure Bathing Culture - Chalice (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

A duo with a knack for making music that sounds unearthly yet familiar. The beautiful strangeness of Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman's music dominated their 2013 debut album Moon Tides; on later albums, such as 2015's Pray for Rain and 2019's Night Pass, they streamlined their sound and put their catchy songwriting front and center.

We’re elated to share our fourth full length album ‘Chalice’. This collection of songs is about the ritual of creativity, progress and transformation, the search for transcendence and joy, and the ability to overcome the things that haunt us.

Co-recorded, produced and mixed with our bandmate Justin Chase from late spring into and through the summer solstice of 2021 in Cottage Grove, Oregon. It was the first time out of our home in Portland since the pandemic began and there was something really magical about being in a small western town that was also opening up for the first time. Texturally and sonically we wanted the music to feel warm and rejuvenating. We wanted Sarah’s voice to feel like a guiding immersive spirit that leads you across the record but we also didn’t want to overly layer it. We would use a lot of timed delays just on single words and then pan them around to create mysterious otherworldly reverbs and echoes. In addition to our beloved palette of clean electric guitars and drum machines we wanted to explore some more acoustic textures so we recorded Daniel’s J45 with a single ribbon mic and we referred to this sound and its place on the album as “Alligator Man”, the rolling arpeggiated acoustic guitar parts on songs like The Sun, The Heron, The Chalice etc were a new thing for us. Texturally we had this idea not to use any synth on the record at all, only Mellotron strings and plucks (though to be fully transparent a DX7 pad did manage to sneak its way onto The Fountain…;). We used lots of percussion, tambourines and shakers, different sized floor toms with mallets, recorded bells, rain sticks and wind chimes. We even recorded seagulls. We would refer to these sounds as the “environmental” layer. We wanted it all to sound like it was being played by groups of children or monks or maybe a church congregation, or even a cult.

In many ways this record feels like it wrote itself. Writing began at the end of 2019 and the rest was written across 2020. The way these songs came through us honestly felt miraculous given the times we were living through, personally and collectively….’The Chalice’ was the last song we wrote and we knew it would be the final song and the title of the album. This ritual we enact, creating and living in our musical world, participating in the cycles of it all, being willing to let the ghosts enter our space and then pass through us, to never, ever, ever give up on the search for joy …holds the key to everything sacred and expansive between us….and so through the silver of the keyhole we bring you Chalice.

Tracklist:
01. The Heron
02. The River
03. The Sun
04. The Memento
05. The New World
06. The Fountain
07. The Child
08. The Lovers
09. The Houseboat
10. The Chalice


Thanks to the Original customer!