We talked to Pleasure Island frontman, Sean Ekins about his new project and an eventful career starting out in Australia…
Liverpool Noise:Hi Sean, we’ve heard your debut single The Game and it’s a really energetic, lively track with some stand out lyrics. Would you say the single is a good marker for what we can expect from Pleasure Island?
Yeah we’re hoping we can write a few more like that one. It’s a lot of ranting, trying to make something that’s quite disposable without coming across as lazy or stupid. People have been receiving it well so big hats off to the guys at Red Visuals and Motor Museum for making us look/sound good.
Liverpool Noise: Your previous music project, The Spitfires, based over in Australia was pretty successful and you even supported The Cribs. How did that come about?
It was all a bit of luck, we’d been given a small showcase slot outside a music industry convention. The stage consisted of a load of wood chip all piled up on the pavement… it looked a lot like we were playing on a compost heap! We got spotted playing by a Sydney tour manager, he liked us enough to give us the Cribs support and free tickets to see Spiritualized at the Sydney Opera House. Which was nice.
Liverpool Noise: What’s your creative process like?
Generally I spend quite a few hours each day mulling over song ideas and emailing snips of lyrics to myself (my inbox is a skip) and recording the odd melody onto my phone. Then when it comes to writing the song a lot of the work is done and I’m just bolting it together. I take it to Sam fairly complete, he rolls his eyes at the lyrics, adds some drums which sets me off on a few tangents and it goes back and forth until the song has gelled. It takes 5 minutes to write the bass (Sorry Jay x) then it gets a quick demo. After that it’s just figuring out how to play the damn thing live and we’re done.
Liverpool Noise: What musicians/bands are you listening to at the moment?
Suede, The song Mental as Anything did for the Crocodile Dundee movie, Another Girl Another Planet, Tracy Chapman, Television Personalities, Hot Chip, Dick Dale, Buzzcocks, Janelle Monáe and The Doors in that order.
Are there any Liverpool musicians or bands you’d like to play alongside? Anything Jamie Roberts is in.
What’s next for Pleasure Island? When will your EP be out?
We have a follow-up video to shoot, a raffle of Japanese shite to give away and the EP will be out early next year. It might be called “Activate Teaspoon” and we can’t wait to play it to everyone.
Pleasure Island release ‘The Game’ on 1st November. There’s a free video premiere party Friday 4th October at VideOdyssey, plus the single launch party at Kazimier Stockroom on 1st November. For details of both events visit the Facebook event page.
To find out more about Pleasure Island visit https://www.pleasureislandband.com/
You can find on the band on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Soundcloud.
