sábado, 30 de janeiro de 2016

Color Me with The Pleasure Holes - An Interview


Mr Kevin Shields continua e certamente continuara a fazer escola mundo afora, e que assim seja.

Hora e vez aqui nas páginas do TBTCI do novíssimo, barulhento e sonhador The Pleasure Holes. 

Holes of Pleasure foi o debute deles lançado no final do ano passado e ontem um novo single veio ao mundo, Color Me. A união entre ambos é recheada de reverb, loops, camadas e mais camadas de distorção como prega a cartilha gazer.

Para ouvir alto e "alto".

***** Interview with The Pleasure Holes *****



Q. When did The Pleasure Holes start? Tell us about the history…
The Pleasure Holes started about two weeks ago as a project, but I have made music consistently through my life… mostly heavy metals. I harass my friend Nick that, probably only out of friendship, bothers to listen to what I do. I would use email to send mp3’s, but that become cumbersome in comparison to the Bandcamp process. Fortunately for me a random guy emailed me and bought a track which floored me. This motivated me to really clean up the songs and make them something more palatable. Thank you Henry! As far as the name the last couple of months I had been kicking around a band name called “the pleasure holes” and imagined a new genre of music called guilt rock. This was to be some form of Type O Negative music that was awkwardly dark and sexual, however it morphed into shoe gazer/rock format it is now because I am a dad, husband, and a neckbeard. I don’t have the gravitas to make music as awesome as I imagined guilt rock to be.

Q: Who are your influences?
Oh geez… my influences are SWANS, Soundgarden, Mac Demarco, Ariel Pink, David Bowie, MBV, NIN, October Project, Smashing Pumpkins, Type O… the list could go on!

Q. Make a list of 5 albums of all time…
Mac Demarco - 2: This album change my ideas about song formats and tone. He has mastered the format of pop without really trying, and he still writes some incredibly complicated riffs that are pleasing to my ears. I listen to it at least once a week.

SWANS - Soundtracks for the Blind: What is there to say? It is hard to pick a particular album from SWANS because they are all really good, including The Burning World that M. Gira supposedly detests. This album opened the door for sounds and drama in my brain. It was very disorientating and strange.

Meshuggah - Catch 33: What an album! Really showed the possibilities of what could be done with programming drums, and thematically I love the album. These guys are without equal in terms of raw technical ability, and the ability to make me feel something.

Castevet - Mounds of Ash: I am a metal guy at the end of the day through and through. It is a real shame these guys broke up because they took the format of black metal into something very transcendental and smart. The wall of sound guitars are pretty incredible, the songs themselves are tight, and the chord progression are totally unique.

David Bowie - Station to Station: I can’t elaborate with anymore quality than what has already been written about this album. There was a period of my life where D.B was the only thing I cared about or listened. This album stood out as the first real departure to some really ground breaking stuff that people still haven’t figured out how to make palatable the way Bowie did.

Q. How do you feel playing live?
So far this hasn’t left the guest bedroom in my house, so I imagine I would be nervous! Hopefully, I would be cool and be this awesome frontman that people would want to see, but I’ll just have to stick with playing to my daughter against her will.

Q. How do you describe The Pleasure Holes sounds?
The Pleasure Holes sound is hopefully pleasing! I guess it is a cross between MBV, Smashing Pumpkins, with some Robin Guthrie maybe sprinkled in? I really hate to be presumptuous and compare myself to great musicians like them. Definitely falls into the rock/shoegaze format. I would really like to see what direction it goes in… Tame Impala has done an incredible thing with their last album, that is in my opinion, to meld the guitar with dance in a pretty unique way. Maybe there is some room for a gazeyer sound?


Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs ?
The songs usually come together pretty quickly. With the exception of “indivisible colors” and “pleasurelands” the other songs were written in the last two weeks. I usually come up with a riff, and try to play something that slots in nicely for a second guitar. The other thing I attempt to do instrument wise is what I call “walking baselines”. Now, I don’t know anything about music theory so I am talking out of one of my pleasure holes, but often I hear bands where the bass just follows the root note and it doesn’t do anything interesting. This is fine for anchoring a song a lot of the time, but I think you miss a lot of real estate sonically potentially. Very much depends on the song because in “speckled warblers” it wouldn’t be a good fit since the focus is the warbling guitar. In my opinion, if you listen to a band like Stone Temple Pilots the reason the songs were so good was the baselines De Leo played. He played some complicated stuff that made the song without being conspicuous about it. Imagine an STP song where the bass just followed the root note the whole time: that would be pretty lame! However, I never noticed that until I had a friend pointed it out to me. That observation changed a of things for me. As far as recording, the signal chain is an RME Fireface 800 I bought a long time ago and an ART MPA II preamp. I always record directly to the computer, and the drums have all been Logic 8 loops because I have yet to buy some drum software. I hope to upgrade things in the future. For the guitar I use a Dean Dimebag ML. I know, no Jazzmaster or Jaguar! I plan on getting one in the future, but for now I make due with the Flame-o-matic. The nice thing about the Dimebag is Floyd Rose tremolo. I can rest my hand right on the bridge to bend the strings which I keep a little bit out of tune. I don’t use too many effects other than the presets in the software, and try to get the sounds from the tremolo and the position of the strum. In “pleasurelands” the flanging/phasing sound is actually strum from the neck down to the bridge which cause the tone shift.

Q. Which new bands do you recommend?
Cherry Coals. Cherry Coals. Cherry Coals. What a brilliant songwriter and guitarist! It is like Johnny Marr and Real Estate had a child. I can’t wait to hear some more stuff from him. He plays very unique lines with some dissonance that is right up my alley. Another brand worth checking out, I have been told that they are coming out with a new record this year, is Thantifaxath. They are a Canadian black metal band that do some pretty incredible stuff. Their Sacred White Noise is an album that needs to be heard.

Q: Which band would you love to made a cover version of?
I have been kicking around doing a cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “These Walls”. The jazz phrasings are incredible difficult, but sound so pleasing to the ear. It is probably beyond my technical ability, but if you add enough delay anything can be played! I have also made a ten song dedication album to Mac Demarco. That isn’t a cover, but I love his music so much!

Q: What are your plans for the future?
I hope to start working on the follow up to Holes of Pleasure this year. I have one more semester left of school, and a move back up north in my future, but I’ll have a solid month or so of time to work on it. I plan to make a full 10 song album, so hopefully it won’t suck! I think too I might outsource the mixing and mastering to make it a proper record because I think it might be a disservice to people’s ear to be subjected to my poor sonic chops.

Q: Any parting words?
I am incredibly grateful for the interview, and I hope everyone that reads this has a great day!
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Thanks

https://thepleasureholes.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/tphband/