My Pleasure

AI and Bhunas

Words: Paul Chapman Images: My Pleasure

Don’t Go to the Sea’, Bhuna for Breakfast’ and ‘Avant Garde Girlfriend’ are just three tracks by My Pleasure, a local musician whose work is “terrific observational pop music with a wry sense of humour” according to BBC6 Music’s Steve Lamacq … but don’t take his word for it, check out My Pleasure on Spotify.

My Pleasure is the stage name of Lewis Young. Love saw Lewis move to Chesterfield about ten years ago from Hull, to be with partner Nicki, where he is well and truly settled; two kids, house, car and all that kind of stuff. But away from the family he gets creative, filling his days with a full-time career in music.

I asked how he’d describe his sound. “I’m genuinely trying to make pop music, but this isn’t what comes out. I try to start serious but every time I end up finding the humour in the mundane. I want the sound to be pop music but with a commentary, it could be described as ‘not-pop’.”

Lewis has a varied set of musical influences, it started at school where his guitar teacher had a load of students playing ‘Wonderwall’ en mass. “It wasn’t perhaps the best start, but I loved it. At 18 we set up a band called ‘Jesus Christ’ a post punk influenced set of young Hull adolescents taking cues from Captain Beefheart, all good but with such a provocative name, googling us became a real problem!”

“We had a good following in Hull, but it wasn’t long before we broke up and a splinter group started called The Glass Delusion, a much easier name to work with and again one that has since been eventful, being hijacked on Spotify.”

Lewis started working on a solo project alongside his other band commitments and found benefits in working on his own. “It was nicer to be my own creative self although it was through a Glass Delusion single launch that I met Nicki.

“I moved to Chesterfield in 2012 and continued my solo work. Glass Delusion kind of continued but fizzled out over time, we had no real end point, we did try to keep the band together but as people moved to different countries it came to a logical end.”

Lewis’s list of influences is a long one, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, The Beatles, Jeffrey Lewis, Half Man Half Biscuit, David Bowie. I’ll mention My Pleasure’s musical style again, we used ‘not-pop’ above, as we chatted we mentioned, ‘almost-pop’, ‘non-pop’ it’s hard to pigeon hole, he plays live acoustic, his mixes are electro. Lewis is keen to point out that he’s not influenced by 80s music, more 70s and noughties, although when I listened to ‘A Decent Excuse’ it reminded me of early Human League before the girls joined, all heavy synths with a story to tell.

We chatted for a while about how we consume music. “I worked at Tallbird Records in Chesterfield for a while, this resulted in me consuming a massive amount of vinyl, but have always used Spotify, I no longer buy physical music it’s all streamed.”

Personally, I remember buying vinyl, sitting down, and playing each side end to end, no interruptions, I’m not so sure people take the time to ‘listen’ as intently as we used to, we’re always multitasking, this wasn’t a thing when I was a teen.

Lewis’s big concern is Artificial Intelligence, “It’s so easy to use it to create generic tracks, background music,” explains Lewis. “I don’t think people are prepared for what's to come. There is a project now that Paul McCartney is working on using scraps of tape produced by John Lennon, feeding this into AI to help finish a Beatles song.

“Streaming does change what you can do though,” says Lewis. “The seven-inch single dictated the length of a record as you were limited by the physical product, the same is true of a 12" album, but with streaming you can do what you want.

“So much music is written for streaming though today; the hook must hit you in the first few seconds, so you don’t skip to the next track on a playlist. I love that music can be played in the background or you can sit down and listen intensely, the AI future is interesting but perhaps a bit scary for musicians and artists.”

So, what is it you enjoy so much about what you do? “The process of bringing it all together, starting with an acoustic sound and adding in the various layers to record and create the full picture. The process of writing is just as enjoyable as playing live.” It was at this point that Lewis thought a bit about playing live before admitting that he does enjoy live performance but it’s not his key focus, perhaps he needs to get out and do more!

Lewis makes music every day and alongside My Pleasure has his own recording label, Adult Teeth, produces soundtracks for trailers, freelances, and dips in and out of projects with other musicians such as Real Dogs where it’s all about messing with synths, and Soft Lad, an acoustic duo with Kieran Smith (who performs solo as Ichabod Wolf).

When Lewis set out with My Pleasure, he set a long-term goal to be played on BBC 6 Music, imagine how excited he was when Tom Robinson played his first single and then got a follow up quote when Steve Lamacq played ‘Haircuts’. Lewis was humbled and has since set some new goals!

I asked a final couple of standardish questions.

What single track and album he’d take on his desert Island? Single - Blue Monday by New Order and album - Hunky Dory by David Bowie.

What he loves about Chesterfield and what would he change? “I love how beautiful it is around here, I’m fascinated by the Nine Ladies stone circle and if I could change anything I’d like to see a better music scene, some more dedicated music venues would be great.”

“I’m excited about Unhampered Live, it’s encouraging to see businesses and people coming together to create something unique.”

Where did the name come from? “My daughter, Holly, had a period of saying ‘My Pleasure’ whenever she was handed something when she was about four, it just stuck with me.”

You can listen to My Pleasure on all streaming services, just search ‘My Pleasure” and you can also hear some of his work on a playlist that he’s created just for S40 & S41 Local on Spotify, the QR code opposite will take you straight there.

Enjoy. bit.ly/myPLEASURE

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