Photo by Alex Carre
The deconstructed birth of "Champion" by the curious and beautiful Pleasure Craft, more artful than Nine Inch Nails and more caustically feral than David Bowie and Klaus Nomi but somehow sharing the similar collective divergent, sideways D.N.A of all three of them, is intriguing and exquisitely cool. Pleasure Craft is at it's burning core, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, artist, universe builder and Torontonian Sam Lewis. The track is from Sam's concept album "WALLS, MIRRORS AND WINDOWS" that pivots on a 3 act play, personified by (maybe) fictional fractional characters.
Sam shares: "The three acts of this album correlate to a time of dramatic change in my life. I wanted it to feel like a kind of impressionistic movie or play with an unsettling, open-ended resolution like, to be continued…"
A very personal vision, Sam wrote, arranged and recorded the track beds in his Toronto apartment before giving them to his collaborators Mingjia Chen (backing vocals), Ben Green (drums), and River Radcliffe (guitars), who each recorded their parts from their respective homes. Sam's former roommate Andrew Feels handled mixing on 10 of the 12 tracks, while Phil Bova mastered.
There is so much to gleam from, to love on "Champion" from the sort of Gary Numan on steroids walls of synths and bottom heavy muscular drumming to the surreal heavy metal ascensions but most, most of all it is Sam's vocal aesthetic. It is, in and of itself, something to behold. At times I sense an almost androidian stance, his voice pitch bending like a robotic glitch and then settling into something more human. When at full throttle, Sam voice is purely muscular, flesh and blood and maybe alien. His vocal performance walks a tight rope and I love that. Hell, yes.
Pleasure Craft's debut full length "WALLS, MIRRORS AND WINDOWS" drops March 9th, 2022.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/samlewis.to/
https://www.pleasurecraftto.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pleasurecraftmusic/
https://soundcloud.com/pleasurecraftmusic
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ckVX9yP9zoeucDtmJjC1U
Pleasure Craft, which Lewis began in 2017 as a solo project, operates as a band in a loose sense: Lewis helms and writes demos for the songs, which he exports to bandmates Mingjia, guitarist River Radcliffe, and drummer Ben Green to add their respective parts. Lewis’ goal in assembling collaborators wasn’t to find musicians to follow his vision, but rather ones whose own vision would create something new, stronger than the sum of its parts. As a result, the tracks Lewis receives back are radically different—and better—than the demos he sends out.
This idiosyncrasy is one of Pleasure Craft’s most impressive and intriguing elements. Each Pleasure Craft show is likely to have a different lineup—Lewis explains that he’s never played two consecutive gigs with the same band. Yet the project’s musical and thematic identity is singular and unmistakable: it pinballs between new wave, alt-pop, synth, and indie rock with punkish sarcasm and staggering technical precision. Tying it all together is Lewis’ narration, at times a sneering drawl and others a belting howl, always sifting through what it means—and does not mean—to be a person raised and socialized as a man in 21st century North America.
Lewis says that previous Pleasure Craft releases, including 2019’s fantastic, raucous Ep2, were
experimental, serving as “practice records” while zeroing in on a solid identity. On “Bag Down,” that identity emerges with slicked-back hair, dripping in bravado and clad in a muscle top. If threatened, it’s prepared to throw fists on the disco ball dance floor at a grimey downtown club. But for both Pleasure Craft and the character in “Bag Down,” this is just the beginning. Stay tuned.
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Pleasure Craft, Industrial, Alternative Rock, Canada, Toronto, debut LP "Walls, Mirrors and Windows", gothic new wave, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, Sam Lewis, divergent artist, "Champion" Official Video,
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