Light Falls Forward is the creation of Charlie Evans and Naomi Paget. They met at a party where one was filming the other for a music video. They got talking about Derren Brown and biscuits and immediately decided they quite liked each other. After moving in together and setting up their home studio, they decided to have a go at writing music. Charlie had been writing riffs and producing music with other musicians but hadn’t found the person to fully realise his ideas. Naomi had been gigging with several bands but had loads of her own material that she hadn’t shown to anyone. What happened next was inevitable.

At the start of 2011, they set themselves the challenge of writing and recording an EP in a week. The result was “Four Seasons and a Day”, a demo EP that can be found on their Soundcloud website. This spurred them on to write more and more songs, gathering enough material to record a studio EP later that year. These new songs had a much bigger sound that needed more people so they went to their good friend and drummer Ed Williams, who, on first listen, created parts that completed the songs perfectly. A few rehearsals and several strong coffees later he was in the studio laying down parts. They dreamed of having live strings rather than samples they’d used before and were lucky enough to meet four very talented string players who came together on the day and played as if they’d been together for years. The result of these recordings was Songs and Shadows.

Songs and Shadows is all about the light and shade of everyday life. The music draws its influences from Elbow, Sigur Ros, Kings of Convenience and Beth Orton. The songs are filled with an emotional honesty and have a storytelling nature, told from different perspectives as the pair take it in turn to sing lead vocals. The themes are built around day-to-day struggles but contain an optimism that makes you feel that, in the closing words of Weather The Storm, “It’s all OK”.

This debut EP is at times cinematic, at times close and intimate - from the soaring strings of Little Things and defiance of So What, to the beautifully atmospheric Weather The Storm. The last track Here & Now sees the full band sound stripped away, leaving Charlie’s angular guitar and Naomi’s comforting vocals to create a love song of simplicity and purity. This album will draw you into their world of songs and shadows and let you escape for a while.

Light Falls Forward started gigging as a duo a year ago at an open mic night in Oxford Circus and have since gone on to perform all around London (Notting Hill Arts Club, The Luxe, 93 Feet East, Old Queens Head and more) culminating in playing at and running their own night (LFF presents…Light Up The Night) in December 2011 at The Slaughtered Lamb, which raised money for Shelter.