Light Asylum at the Mercury Lounge



Shannon Funchess of Light Asylum

Shannon Funchess moved from her native Southern Baptist Mississippi roots to the Seattle grunge scene and finally to Brooklyn's then-nascent indie-rock scene by 2001. There she joined several bands before forming the mission of Light Asylum with Bruno Coviello in 2010. The two combined their visions of raw and danceable electronic music with dark, socio-political commentary and a call to action. Light Asylum recorded a four-track EP, In Tension, in 2010 and a self-titled album in 2012.

Watching Light Asylum’s performance at the Mercury Lounge tonight, I thought “this must become the avant garde of New York indie dance music.” I then discovered the New York Times already published a similar prophecy about Light Asylum. Funchess growled and grunted her guttural and androgynous contralto sounding somewhere between James Brown, Grace Jones and an angry pit bull. Backed by basic rock-bottom rhythm tracks, Funchess violently hit synth pads with her drumsticks not only for musical accompaniment, but also to allow her body an expressive release of pent-up aggression. Her accompanying musician on keyboards, Raphael Radna, maintained the grooves with simple, hypnotic riffs on his keyboard synthesizer.  Most EDM artists today are increasingly complicating their multiple layers of sound; Light Asylum is moving in the opposite direction, making bare-naked music stripped down to pulsing rhythms, similar to what the Bronx band ESG did with funk punk music in the 1980s.