Clean music: Chastity Belt curate the four greatest bathtime albums
There is a song for every occasion. Regardless of whether you are feeling happy, angry, joyous, horny, sad, or depressed, there will be a track that perfectly accompanies your feelings. That’s the beauty of music. It gives you a soundtrack to everyday life, something that elevates the everyday to make the mundane extraordinary. When ABBA said, “Thank you for the music,” they were nodding towards the transformative power of it, and they were right to do so.
Given that music is such a powerful tool and a means to improve your everyday life, all you need is the proper albums for the right occasions, and that’s where Chastity Belt is here to help. The band have an exciting approach towards creativity and music, and as such, when they get asked to make playlists, it’s not as simple as just creating one for happy and sad occasions.
Depending on your outlook on them, the bath can be incredibly relaxing or incredibly mundane. Regardless, Chastity Belt’s Lydia Lund has assembled a playlist of the four perfect albums to enhance the experience. Light yourself some scented candles, dim the lights and let this music take you to another realm of relaxation.
The first record Lund nominates is Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports. Moments of silence within the ambient sounds on the record mean your bathing experience would consist of music and the natural sounds of water in the bath, the perfect way to truly relax. Lund discovered it when she was stranded in a cabin in the Cascades and passed the time by flicking through the record collection.
“Once I found this album, I was hooked,” she said, “It felt magical and eerie in the best way to pipe through the speakers. The pauses in the music accentuated by the snowy silence blanketing the house. No album brings me down to earth like this one – especially when I put it on while I take a bath.”
Her second pick is Adrianne Lenker’s Instrumentals. “This is another bathtime standby for me,” she said, “I love to take voice memos of ordinary moments and listen back to them, and somehow, this album feels like it captures the most unordinary of ordinary moments.”
Her next pick is Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and their record Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia song (Piano solo). Lund was slightly ahead of the curve on this one, as while the composer was doing exceptional numbers these days when she first wrote the record, she was still relatively unknown. “I can’t blame the algorithm for giving the people what they want. I hope she hits 1M. Her songs sound like water to me, unfolding so naturally.”
Finally, in a slightly more modern take, Lund recommends Mitski’s critically acclaimed album The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We. “This album is a good one to ruminate on. For the most part, I don’t want lyrics disturbing my bathing experience,” she said, “But when I want to hear thoughts besides my own, this is one of the albums I put on.”
