Words by Keehnan Konyha
Photography by Leonard Greco

It would be unfair to place Light Asylum, the duo of Shannon Funchess and Bruno Coviello, within the current darkwave revivial Brooklyn has been enjoying for the last year or so. There are shared affinities to be sure; Depeche Mode, the Psychedelic Furs, the forever ubiquitous Joy Division. But while many of their contemporaries make do aping the sounds and gestures of past luminaries, Light Asylum create new visions from reference. Their sound, and their songs, are entirely their own.

Light Asylum’s central, almost stultifying force is Funchess’s voice. At times an almost physical presence, it can embody the bratty, reverb-soaked shout of Frank Tovey; the soulful croon of Alison Moyet; the defiant snarl of Grace Jones. It’s the kind of voice that shouldn’t so much draw comparisons to predecsors as it does create it’s own. Hearing Light Asylum before knowing what the band members look like, it can be almost impossible to disceren the gender behind the melody. This voice, buoyed and set aloft by Coviello’s sparkling, Tangerine Dream-ish synth lines and machine gun drum machines creates a sound so big you find yourself searching for other musicians inside the smoke machine haze they perform in.

At the time of this interview, Light Asylum were unsigned, though it’s difficult to imagine them staying that way much longer. In the few short months of early 2010, they’ve seemingly played at least once a week, with a short tour to the West Coast and breif stints opening for Yeasayer and LCD Soundsystem. Funchess’s apparently endless supply of energy has seen her contributing guest spots and residencies in !!!, Rose Parade, TV On The Radio, T.K. Webb and Telepathe. Coviello is no slouch either, having helmed Bruno & The Dreamies and maintaining his solo efforts as Brother Bruno.

I met Funchess and Coviello on the hungover side of a crisp February day at their warehouse loft practice space, near the East River in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, to talk about influence, plans for the future and dream remix projects.

Are you guys both from Seattle? Shannon, you’re from Seattle, right?
Shannon: Originally, yeah.

How long have you lived here?
Shannon: Uh, for almost 10 years.

Okay, ‘cause I noticed on the ‘influences’ section of your Myspace, you had all these bands from Up Records –that ‘90s Seattle label –like Land of the Loops and Violent Green. Shit I have never heard anyone out here talk about. Did you have a relationship with that label?
Shannon: Sort of. My roommates were in Violent Green. I joined them on tour for about a month, toured the country back and forth.

It’s funny. I interned at Up when I was like, 15 years old.
Shannon: Was Chris still alive?

Yeah.
Shannon: Yeah, I love that label.

(To Bruno) You’re from here, right?
Bruno: Yeah, I grew up in New Jersey.

Was Light Asylum originally a solo project for Shannon?
Shannon: Yes.

When did Bruno come on board?
Bruno: May of 2009.
Shannon: Yeah, we just formed in May. Everything online right now is just [me and Bruno]. I took down anything else I had worked on under the alias Light Asylum. The songs are what we’ve written together. I used to just work with different people, make beats and stuff.

How much has the direction changed since including Bruno?
Shannon: A lot. This is more what I was looking for and going for, but the other people I had worked with didn’t quite understand what I wanted to do, I think. But Bruno does. So instead of working with a producer, per se, I found someone to actually make music with. Other people wanted to produce stuff, but I wanted to make music as opposed to have someone produce something for me. I really wanted to get out there and perform and be singing, but when it came down to it I was like, ‘I need to be writing stuff that means something to me.’

How long did it take to put the live version together?
Shannon: A week or two? We played our first show after playing together maybe three times or something.

Wow.
Bruno: The live stuff came first, we didn’t record anything until a month or two after we had written a bunch of songs.

I thought one of the things that was so great about seeing you guys live was how perfectly it works in a live setting. Like how immediately it translates. In the age of GarageBand, it’s increasingly rare to see an electronic band who can really make it work live.
Bruno: Well, we were live first. That’s the thing that maybe people don’t quite grasp. Nowadays with electronic music, you record a bunch of tracks on a laptop and then try to translate it live somehow. We wrote the songs and the recordings are just us playing the songs the way we would live.
Shannon: I think the point Bruno’s trying to make is that we didn’t make all this music on a laptop and decide that we needed to figure out how to play it live. We played it live from the beginning. All the synths are hardware. Actual, tangible instruments. In the beginning I used to play some drums, and I’ve always had the electronic drumpads. The live drums were just because I wanted to be doing more than just the singing, and I wanted it to be more of a live band, adding to the beat, besides there just being a drum machine. I would sometimes play the floor tom or something at practice, and I had a cymbal for a while that I would just play along to these electronic beats, or whatever (laughs). I want to implement even more acoustic drums into the show.

That’s awesome. You guys put out a lot of sound for two people onstage.
Shannon: I love that about duos though. Sometimes it’s really surprising how much noise you can make.

With the songwriting, do you come to each other with ideas, or is it a collaboration from the start?
Shannon: It’s a collaboration. Usually we just step into our rehearsal space and just go from there. Either one of us might have an idea: We’ll talk and then start playing, and then a song will come out.
Bruno: I feel like our set-up came out of using whatever resources we had at the time.
Shannon: That’s exactly it. We’re playing with all the gear that we own right now.
Bruno: And then like, I think a lot of our association with a lot of these minimal electro bands happened out of necessity. We had a sampler, we had keyboards, we had drums.
Shannon: A lot of people think that there’s a bunch of backing tracks or something when they see us live, but what they don’t realize is what they’re seeing is what they’re hearing. We don’t have any prerecorded keyboards or sequencing. Bruno plays everything you’re hearing, and then there’s a drum machine. We have a sampler but it’s really minimal –
it can loop for a few seconds or whatever – so it’s kind of like downtempo in that aspect. But for us it’s usually a car crash sound. Or a horsie (laughs).
Bruno: Everyone always talks about that horse sample!

I love it! It reminds me of like, weird baby noises in Timbaland tracks or something.
Bruno: Someone was telling me that they hear a hip-hop influence in our music because we use samples in that way. I never really thought of it that way, but I guess industrial music uses samples like that. Those two genres were kind of going on at the same time.

Are you working towards a full album?
Shannon: Yes.

Do you have a date-ish?
Shannon: No –
Bruno: We just finished an EP.
Shannon: Yeah, so that’s finished as of the middle of January. It’s just four songs that we’re basically shopping to labels. Hopefully, since it’s finished – we went into the recording studio, paid for everything – it would be nice to have someone put out these four songs as an EP. Basically, we’re ready to release something, and then start work on a full-length album.

(To Shannon) You were in a bunch of bands before Light Asylum, right? I was reading that you were in !!! for a couple of years.
Shannon: Yeah, I still am. They’ve been working on a new record for the last year or so, so they haven’t been touring as much. It’s an off-and-on situation, like whenever they want me I usually record and tour with them.

(To Bruno) And you were doing solo material as well during that time.
Bruno: I’ve been making music for about 10 years under various different names.

Is it still something you’re doing while being in Light Asylum?
Bruno: Yeah, yeah. I play keyboards in other bands.

My friend Micheal [Magnan] was telling me you had made some music with him and Tobell [von Carter] –
Bruno: Yeah! That’s Popular Science. We haven’t worked on anything in a while but we just talked about maybe putting an EP together. We have two tracks done, and we also did a track with a rapper that was released in [underground art magazine] K48.

Oh, in the last issue?
Bruno: The first track with Tobell, yeah.

Are you doing anything for the new one?
Bruno: Possibly.
Shannon: As far as other bands we’ve been in, if you want the details, I’ve been in Telepathe, I sang for them for a year… (pauses) That might be it, actually. I can’t even remember them all.

What are the bands you consider to be your peers, then?
Shannon: I would say this project Martial Canterel and Led Er Est –
Bruno: There are bands on this label Wierd Records.

Does that have to do with the coldwave club night, Wierd?
Shannon: Yeah, the guy who throws that night also has a record label, and he puts out a few of the artists you might have seen there.

I’ve never been actually, but it always looks amazing.
Shannon: One band, every Wednesday, for like, five years.
Bruno: There’s a video on Youtube of our performance there.
Shannon: They have this awesome channel where you can watch all the past live performances. There’s someone who shoots every show there, this guy Jimmy Patterson.

The sounds on that live recording is great.
Shannon: It doesn’t sound that bad [at Home Sweet Home, where Wierd takes place]. It’s really weird. They don’t have like, a seriously proper PA set up or anything, and it’s a tiny space. And it’s always packed. It’s great. It needs to stay. It’s the only place I know of that caters to that genre and scene.

And it’s been going on for five years? Wow.
Shannon: I think so. (To Bruno) Isn’t that what he said, five years?
Bruno: Maybe longer.
Shannon: When we played, he said, ‘You’re the best thing that’s happened here in five years.’ It was the best party ever (laughs).

How did the Fatima remix of your song “Shallow Tears” come about?
Shannon: Bruno’s friends with Fatima, and I’m newly friends with her, and I’ve performed with her in a [performance art] piece by my friend Gloria Maximo called the Yemenwed project. We played it for Fatima –
Bruno: She expressed interest in doing a remix for us.
Shannon: I think, originally, Gloria wanted to use “Shallow Tears” in her piece, and she and Fatima were going to work on an remix or an edit or something for the art piece. But then they ended up going with something else, and Fatima still had all the splits and stems from the song. She wanted to do something with it anyway.

It’s gorgeous. I’ve played it into the ground.
Bruno: Awesome.
Shannon: Yeah, we love it. We love how minimal it is.

Yeah, it totally deconstructs the original. Are you working with anyone else for remixes in the future? Would you consider remixing other bands?
Shannon: Yeah, I’d love to do that!

Who would be your dream band to remix?
Shannon: Well, I’m sure Bruno has some suggestions.
Bruno: Dream band to remix? (pauses) I dunno! It would have to be a current band.
Shannon: You wouldn’t want to remix anything from back in the day?
Bruno: Oh, that’s a possibility too (laughs)?

(Laughing) Yeah!
Shannon: If you could sleep with any person in the world, dead or alive, who would it be (laughs)?
Bruno: Maybe like, a Depeche Mode remix.
Shannon: Yeah!
Bruno: They always have crazy remixes.
Shannon: Maybe remixing a My Bloody Valentine song would be awesome.
Bruno: I’m really influenced by Depeche Mode and it would be interesting to take it back, and see how we would convert it to the Light Asylum sound.
Shannon: Our interpretation, our translation.

Have you ever heard that Kruder & Dorfmeister remix?
Shannon: Yeah, yeah, “Useless”!
Bruno: Oh yeah, I forgot about that!

It’s unbelievable.
Shannon (singing): ‘Well it’s about time/It’s beginning to hurt…’ It’s awesome. Yeah, Kruder & Dorfmeister were huge on the West coast! All that downtempo shit. I spun downtempo for like, five years or something.

On the West coast?
Shannon: Yeah. And jungle, and drum and bass, and hip-hop and everything. I still DJ here. But not downtempo (laughs).
Bruno: A little bit! Come on.
Shannon: Not jungle or drum and bass either. Okay, a little bit (laughs)! You know, it’s the end of the night. I want people to go home feeling sexy. I’ll drop the Kruder & Dorfmeister remix of Depeche Mode’s “Useless”!