Pure Bathing Culture have announced a new EP Carrido to be released on Infinite Companion. The EP was recorded at Richard Swift’s National Freedom Studio two months after the beloved musician, producer, and muse passed. It will be released on July 3, the two-year anniversary of that untimely death. Pure Bathing Culture’s Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman shared a connection to Swift beyond friendship; the band credit him as “a catalyst for the last decade of our lives, spent creating music as Pure Bathing Culture.” His early encouragement was integral to the duo’s musical evolution, as well as its relocation from Brooklyn to Portland, where Swift recorded both their self-titled EP and debut album.  Because of this profound tie, Swift’s wife Shealynn invited Pure Bathing Culture to be the first to return and record at National Freedom, an endeavor to foster healing and keep music flowing through Swift’s space. “We knew immediately that we would go,” says Sarah. “It was a place we knew well and loved, and we wanted to honor our friend.” 

To mark the announcement, Pure Bathing Culture release the EP opener “Something Silver,” a song emotional and elysian, its first lines glittering wistful: I tried to trade the wind your name / she only laughed and blew away.  The EP title Carrido is a transformation of Richard Swift’s birth name Ricardo Ochoa. Sarah explains, “As we were working I was doing something I often do, I started writing the same word over and over again and in this instance the word was RICARDO … it started to shift and soon it transformed. I started writing the word CARRIDO over and over again.” She adds, “For us Carrido became a world where we could be with our friend again, a place where we could be together one more time doing what we love. It’s a place where we can make sense of the things that happen that feel tragic and inexplicably heartbreaking … it’s a place where we can go to find our way back to ourselves again.”

Pure Bathing Culture will donate 50% of all Carrido sales on Bandcamp through July 10 to Youth Power PDX, a Portland-based, youth-run collective, centering BIPOC and queer (LGBTQ+) stories and voices through the crossroads of story, music, visual art and activism. The band say of their choice, “We have both been so privileged in many ways. Perhaps centrally in our case, given the way our lives have ended up, is that through music we have been able to learn, experience, travel and achieve so much on multiple levels. Art has so much power, whether it speaks of revolution, peace, love, sexuality, etc. … art has always played such a huge role in the evolution of our society. We’re certain it has the power to save lives.”