This Florida-based Heavy Metal ‘zine reached out for an interview, which was a fun change of pace. The following is a transcript:

Love Spirals Downwards. You may not be familiar with this name. Sure, it’s not a HM band. It’s from another underground genre, Ambient. LSD is organized by just two persons: Ryan & Suzanne. He basically does all the instructions in this music, and she does the haunting ethereal vocals. This is the topnotch atmospheric music I really recommend to listen to. Just buy and check all their 3 albums out. They are the high quality music. Well, this interview will more interest you.

SOM: Are you guys vegetarians? Do you still have a thing with Subway or Taco Bell?

Ryan: I prefer Taco bell, though. I used to be a vegetarian. But after living with Suzanne, it’s hard to not eat meat, so I’ll eat it. I don’t feel too bad about it though, because humans are basically scavengers. We are both omnivores and carnivores, so in nature humans have eaten whatever was there, meat or vegetable, to stay alive. But, I still don’t eat much meat. You could call me a bad vegetarian. Taco Bell is still as my favorite fast food.

SOM: Well, if you categorize yourselves as Gothic, it’s not a common form of Goth today, don’t you think? I mean, Goth is sometimes much stronger than emotional side of it. Please tell us how Gothic (musically, and else) you are.

Ryan: I’m about as gothic as Snoop Doggy Dogg. I’ve never categorized myself, nor my art, as gothic. I really don’t understand where people get this idea that we are gothic. All one needs is to listen to our music, or take a look at us, and it’s quite obvious that we have nothing to do with that whole thing. I think it’s because Projekt has a lot of Goths that like their releases, so we mistakenly get categorized as Gothic because some Gothic people buy our music. But that’s unfair and not accurate because many kinds of people buy our music. When we play shows, most often the people I meet who are our fans are just more regular sort of people, like ourselves. I think our music falls into this area of Ambient music that borders a little with acoustic folk, pop, and more dancey groovy stuff.

SOM: What’s “post Gothic” supposed to mean?

Ryan: I don’t know what that means.

SOM: As far as I know, LSD is a 2-piece group. Is that possible to rebuild the music on stage? You do play gigs now, don’t you?

Ryan: Yes, we have been playing live for a few years now. Instead of trying to recreate our albums live, we just strip it down to an acoustic guitar and Suzanne’s voice. Sort of like an Unplugged thing. But it’s still quite powerful, maybe even more so than our albums, on our best nights.

SOM: Do you like to play or prefer recording?

Ryan: I enjoy both and both are very different sorts of things. Recording is more experimental and relaxed while live is more about creating a kind of energy and feeling. Live is about people and their energy, while in the studio it’s about being alone and getting into your own energy.

SOM: Could you give us some background information of yourselves?

Ryan: There’s myself, Ryan, and there’s Suzanne. I do all the writing, recording, producing, and she does most all of the singing and vocal writing. We’ve been doing this together since about 1991 and have released 3 albums in that time.

SOM: Is that true Suzanne is a psychologist? How does the career (the degree) help your music? It makes more emotional?

Ryan: Suzanne studied psychology but is not a psychologist. I studied philosophy, but you shouldn’t call me a philosopher. I don’t think the degrees make our music more emotional or anything. We are who we are and that’s what makes our music what it is.

SOM: The new album, ‘Ever,’ is not on the same avenue that you have done, I think. If not, tell us what’s wrong. If agreed, what kind of conception did you have when you write songs and record them?

Ryan: I think it’s quite different from our previous albums didn’t have any ambient groove or folk pieces like ‘Ever’ has. And there’s not really any concept per song in the album, or any of them for that matter. Instead, there’s more of a feel that ties the album all together. It’s kind of hard to describe this feel in words, but for me it’s a sort of spicy Spanish dreamy kind of feel.

SOM: I’ve never seen your lyrics. Can you explain what kind of things do you sing? And what inspire to write?

Ryan: Oh I don’t know what Suzanne is singing about. She just uses words that sound good There’s no story or anything like that which you are supposed to understand or get. She makes words and sounds and uses them to enhance and add to the feeling of the mu-sic. She’s really gotten quite good at it and it’s always been very natural for her to write like that. Asking her to write a real story or poetry would be almost a foreign concept to her.

SOM: There is a trend which people (some kinds) wear black clothes and say “love Goth.” Some of them love to act like vampire. Some even put sharp plastic tooth in their mouths. What do you feel about this? Is that too childish or you do this?

Ryan: Sounds pretty trippy to me. If someone has a good time doing that stuff, fine. Who am I to say anything about people having fun. That’s what life’s about. But, that sort of stuff is not anything I’m personally into You have any ideas where I could buy some of those sharp plastic teeth? That’d be cool to scare my friends with.

SOM: Last words. (Almost all my readers are Heavy Metal listeners)…

Ryan: Thanks for writing to interview us. I always enjoy it when someone wants to interview us whose musical style may seem very different from our own. I think it just goes to show that it’s the Music and the feeling that are what’s most important, not these words we use as categories or styles of music. I couldn’t care less what kind of haircut or what kind of clothes an artist/ band wears; only people overly concerned with image give a crap about that. All I care about is what the music does to me, and many very different kinds of music produce wonderful, blissful, ecstatic feelings in me.