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The Daily Wildcat

 

PLEASURES brings its horror movie-live show to Tucson on Halloween

PLEASURES+is+a+quartet+from+South+Florida.+The+experiemental+band+has+released+four+albums%2C+its+latest+in+February+of+2016.
Courtesy Pleasures

PLEASURES is a quartet from South Florida. The experiemental band has released four albums, its latest in February of 2016.

Florida-based quartet PLEASURES self-describe their music as “dark and doomy sex music for robots.”

Katherine Kelly, Greg Ferris and Morgan Soltes make up the band’s core members. Roger Lanfranchi has joined the band for this tour.

In February PLEASURES released its debut full length album, Fucked Up Dreams Come True. The band is on tour screening a horror movie it made and playing a live score along with it.

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In an act of serendipity, the band will play in Tucson this Halloween night atThe Loudhouse.

“[The show] is gonna get pretty weird for sure,” Ferris said. “We’ve got a popcorn machine, so we’ll be giving everyone snacks. We have a cool projection show.”

Ferris wrote and directed the band’s horror movie with help from rest of the band. The plot of the horror movie includes short stories about fans leaving the show with a copy of the movie and dying.

The video is being sold on VHS on tour. The VHS comes with a digital download link. PLEASURES also plans on releasing the video online.

Ferris, who plays synthesizer, spoke to the Daily Wildcat about the bands’ recent work.

DW: Why did you choose a horror movie?

Ferris: Wewere looking for more items to sell at our “merch” table. We print the shirts and do everything, we were like, ‘What else can we do?’ And we had started selling a VHS tape, some b-roll from a green screen of a music video — it was sort of like a workout tape.

To our surprise, people bought the VHS tapes. We made plans to make some more, and it was my turn to do the next video. And I had written a horror movie while we were touring. It’s a great activity to keep your brain going while you’re driving. It turned into this 10-minute film.

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Do you have a background in film?

I’ve never studied film. I had studied engineering and art. I studied studio art at Florida State University. But I’ve been touring for the better part of a decade, so it was definitely a new foray into the medium.

But just building on all the past experiences I was able to communicate what I wanted. What a feeling to imagine something in your head, and when you’re seeing it through the viewfinder or looking back it’s just like, “Holy cow.”

So we had a lot of fun with it, it’s mostly in black and white, and practical effects, some Hershey’s syrup for the blood. It helped it be made, but also worked with the aesthetic of the film. It’s essentially a silent film, it’s an expressionist kind of thing. Last night I had a friend describe it as Ed Wood meets John Carpenter, which I’ll take.

Where does the band record?

We had recorded the last album in a warehouse studio close to the beach, sweatin’ through the summer. We had been based out of Sarasota, Florida but we’ve been doing more work in the town of St. Petersburg, [Florida] close by.

I’m expecting that to be the center of activity for us in the future. We’ve been practicing at a place calledThe Bloom gallery … It’s mostly visual artists. I was sold walking in. They have art events every month and we’re hoping to get in there and maybe do some of their events.

Whereas we had our own warehouse studio before, we’re kind of getting into the St. Pete community a bit for our upcoming work.


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