Brooklyn electronic duo Beacon are gearing up for the release of their new album, Along the Lethe, out September 9 via Apparent Movement — their first in four years. Featuring guest spots from Colin Stetson and Matthew Dear, the album continues their fascination with downtempo pop grooves and mutated R&B rhythms.
On new single, “Pay My Debts”, band co-conspirators Jacob Gossett and Thomas Mullarney III create a world of nighttime pop reactions, choosing to focus on the ache of long nights and the gravity of emotional hesitancy. There are subtle melodic vibrations lodged within this electronic pop landscape, complexities that only reveal themselves after multiple listens. It’s gorgeous and possesses a curious darkness, so it’s everything we’ve come to love about Beacon.
“The title of our new album, Along the Lethe, came from lyrics in the song ‘Pay My Debts’,” explains Gossett and Mullarney. “The Lethe is one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek Mythology and souls who drank from it lost all memory of their lives on earth. Forgetting can be seductive, and the Lethe offers a kind of absolution—not in the form of forgiveness, but erasure. The desire to transform the collective trauma of the last two years into a collective amnesia is one of the themes of our new record. The chorus in ‘Pay My Debts’ alludes to an impending ecological disaster that’s followed the narrator even into Hades: ‘Something in the sky turns black, start another fire, I guess.’ Despite the allure of forgetting, and the Lethe’s metaphysical power to do so, the spectre of the last two years is inescapable.”
The accompanying video was directed by Boy Tillekens, who explains that the video was inspired by his idea of “a Thomas Hart Benton painting coming to life.”
Watch the video below.
Beacon’s new album, Along the Lethe, is due out September 9 via Apparent Movement. Pre-order the album here. Follow the band on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
