Florida quartet PLEASURES’ psych/doom/synth project was hatched while working on a small community farm in Northern California in the fall of 2014. The goal was to do something different from anything each had done before and to focus mainly on sound manipulation. Singer/guitarist Katherine Kelly at first wanted it to be a Black Moth Super Rainbow rip-off band. They listened to a lot of Radiohead, The Knife, Warpaint, Suuns and Connan Mockasin. When they returned to Florida, they wrote a set of eight songs to tour with and have been actively touring since late February 2015.

In February 2016, PLEASURES released their debut full-length Fucked Up Dreams Come True, an album that explores the psychotic nature of love vs. self-control, grieving shadow selves and notions of action vs. consequence. The band toured the U.S. in support of the album for most of last year, delivering a pulse-raising live show equal parts intriguing and overwhelming. Experts in sound manipulation, each band member commandeers a station of effects overflowing with cables, wires, LED screens and stomp boxes, weaving masses of aural thread into songs and interludes. Since returning home from the road in November, and after a personnel change at drums, PLEASURES have been buried in the studio and are now preparing to release “Luscious Wave,” the first single and music video of their follow-up effort.

Kelly has this to say about the single, which was recorded by Jasmine Larson and mastered by Michael Regina at Burnt Orange Studios:

“Luscious Wave” is one of the first songs we worked on with our new drummer, Roger Lanfranchi. Asking him to join our band essentially changed the mood and tone of the music entirely — he’s a multi-genre drummer who focuses on R&B and Jazz, so that coupled with our synthy noisiness makes for very cool sounding music. The song itself is about falling in love and never wanting to be apart. It celebrates people in our lives who make us feel like we can do anything by bringing out the most honest version of ourselves.

Synth player Greg Ferris does a call and response vocoder part on the track. He had this to say:

I use the vocoder as a schizophrenic confession. While aiming to be emotive, the vocal stream of consciousness is stripped of personal association – or, it’s the voice inside my head, for short.

The music video was directed by Michelle Primiani. Kelly approached her with a basic concept in mind, developed on the drive back to Florida from California after their November tour. Says Kelly:

I wanted the video to be grounding and honest, to expose each member of the band without an extravagant fictional narrative to follow or costumes or pretense. I wanted it to be confessional and vulnerable. Michelle storyboarded the video with stock pictures to convey the tones she thought I was going for. She suggested the two most intriguing visual concepts in the video – the heads tied to the trees and the masks. We made the masks with my mom and filmed it at Myakka State Park about 45 mins from where we live

PLEASURES
Tour Dates

3/18/17 – St. Petersburg – The Bends
3/22/17 – St. Augustine – Planet Sarbez
3/23/17 – Atlanta – The Earl
3/24/17 – Nashville – DRKMTTR
3/25/17 – Springfield, MO – Outland Ballroom
3/26/17 – Lawrence – Replay Lounge
3/27/17 – Kansas City – Riot Room
3/28/17 – Lincoln – Duffy’s
3/29/17 – Omaha – Petshop
3/30/17 – Fort Collins – Surfside 7
3/31/17 – Denver – Backspace
4/01/17 – colorado Springs – The Flux Capacitor
4/02/17 – Santa Fe – Meow Wolf
4/03/17 – Albuquerque – Ocotillo Room
4/05/17 – Salt Lake City
4/06/17 – Twin Falls, ID
4/08/17 – Spokane – The Observatory
4/09/17 – Seattle – Highline
4/11/17 – Eugene – WOW Hall
4/12/17 – Medford – The Bamboo Room
4/13/17 – San Francisco – Hemlock Tavern
4/14/17 – Pacifica – Winters Tavern
4/16/17 – Long Beach – Que Sera
4/20/17 – Phoenix – Trunk Space
4/21/17 – Tucson – St. Charles Tavern
4/22/17 – Bisbee – The Quarry
4/23/17 – Marfa – El Cosmico
4/24/17 – San Antonio – Limelight
4/28/17 – Pensacola – Chizuko
4/29/17 – Gainesville – Backyard