Here’s a partial transcript of the interview Tom Schulte did with Ryan recently on his Internet radio show, for those that aren’t able to stream audio. Outsight is a featured archival broadcast of the Music Sojourn site so go listen to it if you can!
Tom: How are things going there on the West Coast?
Ryan: Oh man, it’s really, really super hot right now in Los Angeles. I just saw the Weather Channel and the whole West Coast is not, even places that shouldn’t be hot, like Portland, Oregon. It just started today. Where are you at?
Tom: I’m in Detroit, and it’s damn hot here, as well.
Ryan: (chuckles)
Tom: You get to travel a lot with the band, as I understand? On tours and stuff. Isn’t there a new release you’re supporting now?
Ryan: No, no. We haven’t even done a show for about a year or two now.
Tom: Really?!
Ryan: Yeah, and we don’t really “tour” per se. It’s usually been, like, a few one-off shows or a string of small shows put together. I’ve never been, like, packed in a van on the road for a month. I don’t think I have that kinda… I don’t know. Maybe I could. But it sounds kind of, I don’t know, not fun? (Laughs) I like the music part. I like seeing things. But, I don’t know just traveling too much can get kind of wearying. I might starting hating everyone, all my friends I’m traveling with.
Tom: So is that by design, then?
Ryan: Yeah, pretty much. Maybe I should someday, just do it to say I’ve done it. But yeah, more or less by design, I guess. We just didn’t wanna be that kinda band. It’s always been more of a studio project than jamming live, so you know, less reason to wanna go out and jam live, since we don’t really do it here at home, anyway.
Tom: But I understand that in spite of that, Love Spirals Downwards is the best selling artists on the Projekt label?
Ryan: Yeah. It depends how you do the math, different bands would try to dispute that, but we have the biggest selling releases, individual releases. Yeah, we are a popular band, there is demand for us to play, but we just haven’t been willing to, you know, do all that to tour across the country. We’ve been out towards you, in Chicago twice.
Tom: Where’d ya play at there?
Ryan: At The Vic Theatre? Is that the name of it? The place they had the ProjektFest at.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, a real theatre. Do you usually play venues of that size when you do get out there?
Ryan: No, that place can seat well over 1,000 people. Actually… we have, actually. In Mexico City, when we played there, headlining there were… I don’t know how many people there, 1,500 almost 2,000 people or so? I guess that was the biggest show we had ever done, headlining or with other bands. But typically it’s clubs with 200, 300 odd capacity that we play at.
Tom: So, looking over my notes here I see that you do appear on four recently recent compilations with, it looks to me, like remixes of different material?
Ryan: Um hmm, yeah. I was tripping about how different all the compilations are!
Tom: So is that what you do a lot with your time, then? Playing around with existing material looking for new forms to present it in?
Ryan: No, actually I didn’t pursue any of these. They just came through and I thought the ideas sounding interesting, so I gave them tracks. Yeah, I don’t believe… yeah, only one of these tracks is sorta new, so to speak. It was a remix of Claire Voyant, a band… they came out with a comp of remixes of their tracks. So that’s the only thing I actually made new, everything else was tracks I already had. Like, Projekt came out with their 100th release, so they wanted to do something sorta special and nostalgic, that is, songs from the earlier days of Projekt releases, so we gave them a song from our first album —so no extra work. And then, what was the other one? Oh, um… An… (Starts mumbling to Anji in the background) The one with “Kykeon”? (Anji says Heartbeats, mumbling ensues, Anji says, “Forgo”) Oh, no, I’m getting them mixed up!
Tom: There’s Claire Voyant on a session, and um, the other Projekt compilation, Darkwave.
Ryan: Yeah, that’s true, there’s the Projekt: Darkwave one and that’s the one where they took the song from our first album. Then the Projekt 100, which I was just talking about which song we picked, we gave them a song that was a hard to find song, a song from our second album, Ardor, and it’s a mix that was not on the album. It was on another compilation that we gave the track to, 50 Years of Sunshine, on Silent Records. They’re an electronic ambient label. I don’t think they’re around anymore. We gave them that different mix. So we gave Projekt that same different mix for that release of theirs. That’s what Projekt was trying to do, they were trying to get unreleased or rare mixes to put together on this Projekt 100 release.
Tom: I understand, also, that you spend time in some of the clubs there spinning atmospheric dance music?
Ryan: Yeah, I do that from time to time. I was DJing more earlier this year. I’ve been taking little break for a while now. Just a month or so. I guess that’s not too big of a break. (laughs) Yeah, I DJ atmospheric dance music, I guess is a good way to put it.
Tom: It seems like Love Spirals Downwards has really embraced the Internet as a way to stay connected with the fans. I notice that your news is regularly updated on your site, lovespirals.com, and you’ve had Internet presence on lovecathouse.com back in April.
Ryan: Yeah, that’s where I dejayed live on the Internet.
Tom: How’d that go?
Ryan: That was cool, yeah. I had people watching. They were getting good reception, both video and audio of it. Yeah, I had a great time doing that, actually. It’s weird, it’s this weird little house, a little studio apartment kinda thing where they broadcast it out of. No-one lives in it, they rent it out just for their show and then I guess it’s vacant the rest of the week. It was funky, all these weird people come over to hang out and watch it. But it was a fun little party. The Internet is fantastic! You’d have to have not a full brain to be an artist doing music and not take advantage of the Internet in some ways to expand your presence, and to keep in touch with bands. You mentioned the way we do we out up news regularly, and also I’m in the process of getting more audio up there. Right now I have stuff from all our albums and I’m putting more and better quality stuff up, too, so there’s all sorts of stuff on there. Plus there’s a guestbook, too, you can leave some comments or read comments from people all over the world, basically, that have written to us on that.
Tom: It’s interesting, on the first page I was noticing that in the two paragraph summation of the band, your or the author had made a point to talk about ethereal darkwave as an underground genre in quotes, and say that LSD has attempted to bring this style to the masses. Do you see a possibility for popular acceptance of ethereal darkwave music, that it has a lot more…
Ryan: Did I write that on the website?!
Tom: It’s on there, I don’t know who wrote it! There’s no byline on it.
Ryan: Hmm… I’m not sure, I’ll have to go look and check it out. Someone else may have updated it, other than myself. ‘Cause I don’t consider ourselves an ethereal darkwave band. I’m sitting here going, “Hmm… that’s weird!” I was wondering if you were paraphrasing or if it’s really up there. I believe —I’ll take your word for it— that it’s up there, but…
Tom: It says, “Love Spirals Downwards are undeniably a groundbreaking band of the ethereal genre.”
Ryan: Okay, ethereal.
Tom: But I was bringing up that Projekt put you the Darkwave compilation.
Ryan: Yeah. Just ‘cause Projekt pretty much consider themselves a label of darkwave music, even though the bands on there, such as themselves, don’t really consider what we’re doing as having anything to do with darkwave. I don’t even know what darkwave is, so… (laughs)
Tom: That was going to be my next question!
Ryan: From what I remember, how it came into being was they just needed a word —this was years and years back— when Projekt didn’t have the distribution that it has now, which is pretty good going through major labels. Back then, he had to pretty much do it himself to get records out to the stores. So he needed a name for his distribution company. I guess he could’ve called it Projekt Distribution but he chose “darkwave” because he heard in Europe —Germany, in particular— that was the word being used to describe some bands that he thought were like his, you know? Or even his band, probably. So that’s where the name came from. Somehow or another, the word kinda stuck. I mean, other people started using it. He kinda invented the term in America, sort of, or at least it grew from there. But the bands that are typically associated with darkwave, I mean, there’s probably a couple, but typically it’s not the kind of stuff I’m listening to. But I do want to spread ethereal music to the world, if that’s what my website makes claim to. I’ve always been into music that’s atmospheric and moving. So anyway, did that answer the question?
Tom: Yeah, that answered it well.
Tom: I personally enjoy Flux a lot, that’s my favorite that I’ve heard.
Ryan: Oh cool, thanks, that’s my personal favorite of our history so far.
Tom: Well, alright! Keep doing what you’re doing and I hope to get a chance to talk to you again someday.
Ryan: Yeah, I hope so, too. Thank you!