Getcha Some Pleasure Center

Pleasure Center has been busting out club tracks for years and their lastest, Love's A Basic Freedom, is rockin' the dancefloors of summer. We recently had a chance to catch up with Pleasure Center's Cory Conley...and this is what he had to say...

Perry Twins: When did you first start writing and producing music?

Cory Conley: I started in the early 90's. I had a cheap little keyboard and instead of learning to play it properly I'd listen to Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, the Cure - a lot of synth heavy pop and alternative music of the time, and play along with it. It was easy for me to pick out the right notes and figure out chords, and I'd challenge myself to write additional new synth hooks and play along. That led pretty quickly to me writing original songs, but my first "ah-ha!" moment with dance music came when I started going to clubs that were playing house music, and spending way too much time in a dark leather bar that played really great European techno! I realized then that I wanted to write dance music and get it heard.

PT: How did you meet your partner in crime Jennifer Rivers?

CC: I found Jennifer passed out at a nighclub. I had the step over her to get to the bar! No, not really - actually as soon as I had some songs written I put an ad in a local music rag for a vocalist and she was one of the people who responded. She was, by far, the best vocalist who applied. Little did I realize that we'd become great friends too! She'd go to gay bars dancing with me and I'd go to jazz clubs with her. We were both interested in music and men - in that order! Somehow we managed to pull together our first demo during that time.

PT: What is the process of recording new songs like with Jennifer living in Las Vegas and you in Boston?

CC: Well, that was actually a source of concern for me at first. Obviously, when Jennifer lived in Boston, where I am based, it was easy for us to record. Later she moved to New York and she'd come up on a bus for a night or two and we'd record. When she fell in love and moved to Las Vegas I thought, okay - that's it - I need a new vocalist. But we put technology to work, and we book studio time in Vegas and they patch me in so I can supervise the session by phone. I think it works because Jennifer and I know each other so well - she is very astute about knowing what I'm going after and I know her voice well enough to know what she's capable of. We can actually record very quickly. After I hang up, Jennifer and the engineer put the vocals on a disk and she drops it in the mail for me. Within a couple of days I'm editing her vocals!

PT: Your new single "Love's A Basic Freedom" is this year's big Pride anthem. Will you be releasing a video for this song?

CC: I hope so! We did a video for our last single, "You've Got It All Wrong", and it got played all over the place. We actually had a director set up and ideas in place for "Love's a Basic Freedom" but we called it off at the last minute. The director is a friend of mine and there was a weird vibe going on and we didn't want it to ruin our friendship. Thanks to sites like YouTube and the whole idea of viral videos I think you have a much larger window of opportunity than you used to with these things. It's not imperitive that you have a video out right away. In fact, a good video can potentially expose a song to a whole new audience even years after the song is first released, so I'm really in no hurry. I have this fantasy of working with flash animators and other visual artists during the course of Pleasure Center and really do some innovative stuff. Video artists - contact me!

PT: With four singles released so far, is there a full length Pleasure Center album on the horizon?

CC: Well, we certainly have enough material for one! It would be a combination of "best of" and probably our two or three next planned single releases, plus a few things we have that we love but will probably never be released as singles. I don't know though, I'm not sold that the demand is out there for albums from dance artists.

PT: Is there anything else you're working on that you would like to mention?

CC: We're going to be releasing more remixes of "Love's a Basic Freedom" through the end of the Summer, then in the late Fall we'll probably be putting out a little "bonus" track to keep us on people's minds until our next big release next Spring. It's really important to keep plugging away and to keep yourself on people's minds!

You can find out more about Pleasure Center at www.pleasurecenter.net

and you can find our mix of Pleasure Center's "You've Got It All Wrong" on our mixed CD compilation, ACTIVATE, at www.perrytwinsmusic.com or on iTunes along with Cory's great remix of ACTIVATE MY BODY