Pleasure Island

Pleasure Island aka Liverpool-based duo Sean Ekins (guitar, vocals) and Sam Pierpoint (drums) make kinetic, cerebral indie-rock for bodies and minds in these post-Brexit, post-Covid, whatever’s-next times.

Formed in 2020, Pleasure Island made their recording debut with ‘Help Me NHS’, a dark stomping track which somehow echoed both the bizarre spectacle of people taking to their doorsteps and balconies to bang pots and pans in appreciation for exhausted essential workers but also how the health service’s diminished networks are very literal lifelines for people in times of need and vulnerability.

In April 2021 came second single ‘IRA’, a slab of strident indie-rock produced by Bob Cooper at the Chairworks Studio, near Leeds. Hours after the release was announced, Pleasure Island‘s digital distributors said they wouldn’t distribute the track, perhaps wary of service providers ‘canceling’ the track in the wake of the death of Prince Phillip. In 1979, the terrorist ssgroup claimed responsibility for the bombing of a yacht which killed Phillip’s uncle Louis Mountbatten, his grandson and a teenage boatsman.

It’s been a turbulent voyage getting to Pleasure Island circa 2022. But to a duo this talented and tenacious it’s simply more grist to mill. And with ‘Shallow Grave’ and a clutch of new songs and live dates, Ekins and Pierpoint are standing on the prow, eyes squinting to the future.