Light Asylum - Shallow Tears/Genesis

First taste of Brooklyn gothic synth-pop duo's debut album is as glorious as you'd imagine.

Light Asylum have a big place in my heart. I’ve said it before, to anyone that’ll listen (sorry everyone), but I spent a great deal of the end of 2009 hitting play on A Certain Person on their Myspace page. It grabbed me immediately – love at first listen – and hasn’t yet let me go. I finally saw they play live at Pittsburgh’s VIA Festival in October last year (at which Shawn Brackbill took this stunning pic) and, thankfully, they lived up to my dream: a retro-futurist gothic vision of ferociously sensual synths, all-powerful drums and Shannon’s voice – oh Shannon’s voice! Their set knocked me for six. Anyway, following their excellent ‘In Tension’ EP last June (which featured the aforementioned A Certain Person), their debut album is finally on the way – hurrah! – and this is the first taste and lead single. Shallow Tears is an epic, almost operatic, piece of synth pop balladry, while Genesis is more of jam with repeating melodies coiling around and within each other. Both, naturally, rule.