Interview by Isobel Geo for Fiber Online, Oct 26, 2003

ISOBEL: What changed in the Lovespirals sounds with your entrance in 1999?

ANJI: The sound was already evolving in 1998, moving towards something more jazzy and funky than previously. Ryan was working with Doron Orenstein, a trained jazz saxophonist, when I joined. Adding my jazzy and soulful vocals helped to further that evolution. As we continued to work together, my song writing style brought a poppier edge to the music. The biggest change I brought to the band was that I encouraged a more collaborative song writing technique.

ISOBEL: The last album was ‘ Windblown Kiss,’ released last year, so what’s the new Lovespirals’ plans for albums, tours, or remixes?

ANJI: We’ve been writing and recording new songs ever since we finished touring for Windblown Kiss, and are about half way done with an album now. Soon we need to start preparing a new live set that includes all of these new songs. Right now we’re getting together files for a remix competition of our new song “Walk Away” that PeaceLoveProductions will be putting on. We are currently seeking a label to release our next album, as well as looking into possibly doing them ourselves.

Here’s a partial transcript of the interview Tom Schulte did with Anji 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: Been enjoying ‘Windblown Kiss.” Been playing it for the audience here. Ya happy with it?

Anji: Yeah, yeah it turned out a lot differently than probably people might have expected, but… You know, we kinda started out one way… at first we were working on a trip hop song, and then we wrote, uh, the first song, “Oh So Long,” and we realized that we were kinda on to something a little different. We just kinda went with it. Made kind of a rock album. With jazz. 

Tom: Yeah, definitely, and, um, some sort of flamenco, soul, folk touches — it’s beyond retro, it’s almost vintage at times.

Anji: Yeah, you know what? I’m actually really into vintage styles, I guess you’d say. I love antique furniture and vintage clothes, and I listen to a lot of old albums. I think that rubbed off on Ryan while we were making the album.

Interview by Shaun Hamilton

Chain D.L.K.: So what lead to the breakup of the Love Spirals Downwards project and the birth of Lovespirals? Was it the evolvement of the music or from other factors?

Anji: It’s just been a natural progression, really. The first song created by Ryan and I that came out on CD was a [drum and bass] remix of “Bittersweet” for Claire Voyant, which they [Metropolis Records] credited on the album as “Love Spirals Downwards.” That was in late 1999, early 2000, I forget exactly. By 1999 we had already recorded a few songs, so when Temporal was being assembled, we discussed including one or two of our songs with the older LSD stuff. 1999-2000 was a very transitional time. We weren’t totally sure where we were headed yet. Ryan was still very immersed in the DJ scene then, so the stuff we were working on was 10 minute dance tracks – pretty unsuitable as album material. It wasn’t really until 2001 that things clicked into place for us, as far as the album goes.

Chain D.L.K.:How did you two meet and start working on music together?

Anji: We met a few times at different places in LA. We first started talking at a little Projekt party, which both of our bands were invited to. Then we got to know each other more through a series of appearances he made on KUCI, for both my radio show and other DJs’ shows out there. One afternoon he had me come over to his studio and he showed me a few new songs he was working on. One of those became the instrumental, “Beatitude,” and the other eventually turned into “Love Survives”. The first song he had me do vocals on, though, was the club track, “Ecstatic”, which just has a little “oooh ahhh” sample. There were a lot of starts and stops when we first started working together; we were really plagued by computer problems and personal issues.

Jianda Johnson interviewed Anji Bee for a feature article on the Women of Mp3.com Station.

JIANDA: How did you get into music, how long have you been making it, and when did you join Lovespirals?

ANJI: I’d say that I first got into music through my dad. One of my earliest memories is circling around the coffee table to “Here Comes the Sun,” when I was barely able to walk. I started singing very early, doing school productions from Pre-School on. Shortly out of High School I got invovled with different garage bands, doing gigs and recording 4 track demos. Strangely, I really always wanted to be a guitarist, but I’ve just never been very adept at it! I did play guitar in an industrial noise rock band for awhile, but it was a struggle for me. I played percussion in another band around that time too. It’s funny to think about those old bands now, in comparison to my work with Lovespirals. Speaking of Lovespirals, I began working with Ryan in early 1999.

JIANDA: Can you please explain the difference between Lovespirals and Love Spirals Downwards?

ANJI: When Ryan and I began working in 1999 on Drum ‘n’ Bass tunes, he was in a transitional period, unsure if he wanted to make another listening album or start releasing 12″ vinyl instead. At that time, we weren’t sure if our stuff was going to be released as Love Spirals Downwards or as some kind of side project. We were just recording songs and pressing dubplates for him to spin in his DJ sets, not sending them around to labels or trying to get them released. Then I made those tracks available online through mp3.com and folks started contacting us to include stuff on compilations, so by now all of them have been released somewhere or other, which is really cool. But I digress… It’s tremendously hard to explain exactly where or how things changed between Love Spirals Downwards and Lovespirals, because it was all just a natural progression.

A Q&A with Anji Bee just went up on the DAXX site. You can read the full interview over there, but here’s a good selection of topics.

DAXX: In 10 words or less, describe your demeanor.
ANJI: “Mellow” is always the word that comes up about Ryan! I’m kind of a mix of mellow and intense, depending on the situation. Ryan always says I’m “sweet”. Other people tend to say that I’m “cool.”

DAXX: What genre of music do you like to produce? To listen to?
ANJI: We had been making Atmospheric jazz step drum ‘n’ bass the past couple years, but we just completed a downtempo vocal track last night, and I hope we go in that direction for some more songs. We’re also talking about trying a vocal house tune, probably with the help of our jazzy house collaborators, Gabriel D. Vine and Doron Orenstein. They’ve gotten us more interested in deep house stuff ‘coz they have a great band, called Toof, that does that sort of thing. I’m thinking about doing stuff along the lines of some of the Om Records releases — very groovy, mellow dance music with sexy vocals. Ryan wants to use a lot of Rhodes and sax, and experiment more with the beats and grooves. We want to keep it very jazzy, and atmospheric — that’s the main thing!

Rik of The Violet Collective interviewed Anji Bee about her various creative endeavors on mp3.com. You can read the full Q&A over at the Violet Collection site.

Maybe you’ve seen her face around the mp3.com site, or maybe you’ve heard one of her collaborations with Lovespirals, or Voiceless, or Delphinium, or, well, you get the picture. Anji Bee is the voice behind a number of bands I’ve grown to enjoy, so I thought that it’d be kinda neat to have a little chat with her for The Violet Collection…

RIK: You divide your time between a few projects, Lovespirals and Delphinium being the most visible. How does this affect the way you write? Do you sit down with the idea of writing a Lovespirals song for example, or do you decide where a piece will be used after it’s written?

ANJI: I haven’t actually done any recording for Delphinium (formerly known as Datura) in a few years. Justin and I started doing other projects, and then he stopped making music. He’s been saying he wants to get back into it, so perhaps we’ll collaborate again sometime in the future. Since I’ve been in Lovespirals I’ve collaborated with a number of different musical projects, though — mostly during the end of 1999 to mid-2000. I was so excited to join Lovespirals that I went into a really creative period of songwriting, and my song journal was just overflowing.