Finding the Rhythm

Back in October of 2007, I attended Billboard magazine’s last-ever Dance Music Summit. The conference itself was just not good in my view, and given that WMC each March and DJ Expo each August have adequately covered “dance music conferences” on a roughly-semi-annual basis at this point, there just isn’t room for a badly-run, off-cycle conference for an industry this size.

Be that as it may, unlike WMC and even the much smaller DJ Expo, the Dance Music Summit was pretty intimate, and there were ample chances to meet just about anyone else there. One of the highlights of attending was doing just that, and meeting some great people who have since become friends, including several artists and producers.

Among them are Cory Conley and Jennifer Rivers, better known as the duo Pleasure Center. They’ve put-out music at pretty much the rate of one good, solid track every year (an actually quite typical pace for a lot of dance artists). Last year, Love’s a Basic Freedom was that single, which like Heather Small’s Proud is bound to become a perennial gay pride anthem, and the year before, it was You’ve Got it All Wrong.

Both tracks, and Getcha Some (their 2006 release) before them, have established a distinct sound and style for Pleasure Center, with Cory writing and producing, and Jennifer’s very distinctive sound and singing style creating a sort of brand identity for them. A number of remixers big and small lend their talents to each release, and frankly, I’m a big fan.

For 2009, Cory and Jennifer have given us If I Sound Excited. It’s trademark Pleasure Center; Jennifer sounds as energetic and fun as I know she is in-person, and once again, Cory’s writing and producing have given us new material while retaining everything I’ve come to expect from the two.

Energetic and fun are probably the correct words for Pleasure Center itself. While tracks like Love’s a Basic Freedom have an unabashed message in their lyric, not to take anything away from Cory’s songwriting, there’s always a let’s-not-take-ourselves-too-seriously quality to their work. That’s not to say they don’t put a lot into it, I know they very much do. But I guess when you enjoy what you do, it translates into the end result with aplomb.

If I Sound Excited can be heard in the line-up on iDanceRadio.fm, and I’ll be spinning it in my sets for some time to come I’m sure. It’ll be released later this year when additional mixes have come back from the remixers on the project. Definitely check it out; their web site is at www.pleasurecenter.net.