Category Archives: Interview

Interview

Outsight Radio Hours Interview

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. 

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Interview

Sideline April/May/June 2000 Interview

Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry started imposing their own style of ethereal music back in the early nineties. Refusing to see his music getting static, Ryan has always opted for innovation, sharpening his melodies and every time enriching the mood and atmosphere of his compositions that were better and better fitting Suzanne’s lilting voice. Today, Love Spiral Downwards release a retrospective collection of rare and unreleased material on Projekt Records, the perfect occasion for Sideline to look back with Ryan on one decade of melodic sumptuousness. 

By Julie Johnson

Sideline: How was Temporal a good way to start 2000 with a collection of past to present songs with never heard songs?

LSD: It was kind of nice to step back and survey the whole history of the band before beginning the new millennium— to take stock of all the work and realize that I  really like a lot of what we’ve done. And there were some tracks I had done recently for things that didn’t pan out, so this was a great way to get them out on CD where people can hear them.

Sideline: How does Temporal illustrate growth and maturity in the band?

LSD: Temporal shows the progress of the music over time; the similarities as well as the differences. I notice the differences in my recording set up and gear, but that’s just my focus. People like to talk about the sound change for the band, but really, it’s been a gradual process. The music reflects the changes in our lives and interests over time, and this album kinda sums that up. We aren’t static people, and Love Spirals Downwards is not a static band; everything is merely temporal.

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Band News, Interview

RadioSpy Interview on Choler

March 17, 2000 RadioSpy Interview by Sean Flinn:

Indie goths gone electronic, LSD’s sound now sketches its past while tracing its future.

“We’re the first and only for a lot of things on Projekt,” says Ryan Lum, the multi-instrumentalist and driving force behind Love Spirals Downwards, darkwave label Projekt Record’s top-selling act. Lum is sipping on a soda in a RadioSpy conference room and choosing his words carefully. He’s speaking of his band’s use of saxophone riffs on a song from its latest release, Temporal, a career retrospective that includes a number of unreleased tracks. Lum was concerned that Sam Rosenthal, Projekt Record’s sometimes finicky founder, might be less than enthusiastic about the sax track.

“[Rosenthal] actually made a positive comment about the saxophone. He said, ‘You know, it fits somehow,” recounts Anji Bee, Ryan’s self-described “partner-in-crime” and recent collaborator on everything from album art to vocals. Lum’s experimentation — with his sound and with the band’s direction — initially met with grudging acceptance from Rosenthal, who eventually warmed to the band’s new sound.

“It’s not his cup of tea,” Lum says of Rosenthal’s reaction to the band’s shift in sound from “shoegazer,” the ethereal style of feedback- and synth-drenched pop defined by British bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and the Cocteau Twins, to drum ‘n’ bass. “But we more or less have artistic freedom to do as we please. I guess being the top seller on the label doesn’t hurt us in that,” Lum says with a chuckle.

Continue reading RadioSpy Interview on Choler →
Audio, Interview

Interview with Ryan Lum on KUCI’s Riders of the Plastic Groove Show [Transcription & Audio]

Ryan was a special guest DJ on Riders of the Plastic Groove –Orange County’s longest-running electronic music show— on KUCI 88.9 fm in Irvine. After his set, he stepped into the studio to have a chat with Gary Liu AKA DJ Membraneous B. Sausage. The following is a transcription of their interview from a cassette recording that was later shared on YouTube. Scroll down for the video.

Membraneous: You’re listening to the show that we refer to as Riders of the Plastic Groove, but tonight we get another special edition as it is the Membraneous B. Sausage Sneak Attack. I am your host, Membranous, and my side right now is Mr. Ryan Lum. He is the DJ that you just heard spinning for approximately the last hour and 15 minutes or so. In addition that, he is also a member of the band Love Spirals Downwards, who record for the Projekt Record label. Why don’t you say a few word for us?

Ryan: Yo! What’s up? Hey, you listening G, out there in HB? You better be! He didn’t come down tonight, sick boy. [Referring to Daniel Bremmer aka DJ 9-5 Superspy]

Membraneous: Thanks for coming down, by the way.

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Band News, Interview

Keyboard November 1999 LSD Feature

BEAUTY AND THE BREAK

by Markkus Rovito

Ryan Lum may have tamed the breakbeat. His duo with vocalist Suzanne Perry, Love Spirals Downwards, has turned out three brilliant albums of majestic, guitar-wash dream-pop on the Projekt label, rife with heavenly ballads that conjure images of exotic cultures. But on Flux, the group’s fourth album, Lum adds breakbeats to the mix without compromising the band’s signature sound.

A follower of the dance music scene since the acid house of the late ’80s, Lum had wanted to do a more electronic Love Spirals Downwards album for years, but never found the right style. “When I first heard the more ambient, ethereal breakbeat stuff, I was amazed,” he says. “I haven’t heard music that moved my soul like that in years.” So when work began on Flux, the multi-instrumentalist/producer built many of the tracks on breakbeat foundations. “I’m used to making pop songs, like an A section, a B section,” Lum says, “but half the songs on Flux don’t follow that traditional pattern. It’s like having all these different parts and having them make sense as they flow together.”

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Band News, Interview

LSD in Sony Soudbyte Winter 1999

LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS FOUNDER RYAN LUM DISCUSSES USING THE SONY MDM-X4 FOR THE BAND’S LATEST ALBUM, FLUX.

I got the MDM-X4 mainly to record vocals, figuring that four tracks of audio would be plenty for our vocal tracks. But soon after I started using the MDM-X4 for recording Suzanne Perry’s vocals, it became apparent to me that I could get much more out of this unit than I first thought I could from a 4-track recorder. By planning my editing, I found I could free up a track or two, which then gave me ideas to add more guitars to many of the songs, which I did. Using the MDM-X4 gave me more creative options with my guitars, which in the end helped make the songs better.

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Interview

Losing Today Sept 1999

THE DARLINGS OF PROJEKT
Interview & photos by Anji Bee

Love Spirals Downwards are known as the darlings of Projekt Records. And with just cause; they are the best selling band, with the hottest moving new release of Projekt for 1998, “Flux.” This latest of 4 popular full-length albums marks a turning point in the band’s ever-fluxing sound. Whereas the last album, “Ever,” showcased several electronic-based songs in the mix, “Flux” concentrates almost completely on the electronica side of band mastermind, Ryan Lum’s musical influences. There has been some slight controversy over LSD’s “sound change” and band member relationships, but all of that seems ludicrous to the mellow, well adjusted Lum. He’s always created the music for Love Spirals Downwards using whatever inspiration happened to hit him, be it a fine dining experience, an exotic vacation, a shamanic vision, or just simply a new piece of gear to fiddle around with. Although a philopsher at heart, searching for his own personal truth in life, Ryan isn’t a terribly serious artist with an attitude or an agenda. He just likes to make music like anybody else does, for the fun of it.

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Band News, Interview

Interview in Outburn #8, Jan 1999

An interview with Ryan Lum of Love Spirals Downwards by Gary Thrasher

Call it post-shoegazer, call it ethereal majesty… call it post-apocalyptic drum ’n’ bass trance… just don’t cal lit goth. Love Spirals Downwards, darlings of the Projekt label, are a blissful masterpiece of hypnotic rhythms and swirling guitars, topped off with angelic vocals… all with a tinge of dark moodiness and Middle Eastern mysticism. With their fourth album, Flux, a foray into the hazed world of melodic drum ’n’ bass, Love Spirals Downwards are poised on the brink of world dominance… it was on this cliff that I spoke with the mastermind behind the music, Ryan Lum.

How did Love Spirals Downwards come together in the beginning and how did you first become involved with Projekt Records?

It’s so long ago. Suzanne and I knew each other and we just decided to try it out… see how it worked with her singing on stuff I had made. I’d been making music for ages. I’m always just recording and making my own music, as opposed to doing the band thing. I don’t mind rehearsing for shows, but I like to record… that’s where my heart is. I sent a few demo tapes out for the hell of it. I didn’t know who Projekt was. One of my friends, the guy who shot our cover for the first album, knew someone in his art school… Susan Jennings (Projekt owner Sam Rosenthal’s former girlfriend). Somehow they got talking and she said, “Why don’t you have your friend Ryan send his tape in?” We sent a few others out, I think 4AD and Creation were the other two, and Projekt was the first and only to respond. It just evolved from that.

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Interview

LSD Interview on Space Disco for Fish Tacos

Ryan and Suzanne performed live on the “Space Disco For Fish Tacos” show in the KUCI radio station in Irvine on December 16, 1998. The following is a transcript of the post-performance interview by show host, 9-5 Superspy.

Audio of LSD performing “Alicia” on KUCI 88.9 FM, 1998

9-5 Superspy: Alright, you’re listening to KUCI 88.9 FM, in Irvine. This is 9-5 Superspy and I’m here with Ryan and Suzanne, from Love Spirals Downwards.

Suzanne: (mimics DJ’s calm voice) We’re here with Daniel.

Ryan: How’s it going, G? I need a better stage persona. You know, people have these cool names and stuff? I was thinking of “G.” But then there’s that whole thing with Warren G. and Garth Brooks fighting over the G.

Suzanne: Oh is that what the “G’d up sound” is?

Ryan: Yeah. Mmm hmm.

Suzanne: The “G’d up sound with the Pion…” is that what that is?

9–5 Superspy: I guess.

Suzanne: Oh my God.

Ryan: Yeah… But there’s Daddy G. in Massive Attack. So that’s already taken. So I dunno. I think I’m gonna scrap the G.

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Interview

Love Spirals Downwards In-Studio Interview on KUCI [Transcript & Audio]

The All-Purpose Nuclear Bedtime Story 8-10 pm PST

Love Spirals Downwards are known as the darlings of Projekt Records. And with just cause; they are the best selling band, with the hottest moving new release of Projekt for 1998, “Flux.” This latest of 4 popular full-length albums marks a turning point in the band’s ever-fluxing sound. Whereas the last album, “Ever,” showcased several electronic-based songs in the mix, “Flux” concentrates almost completely on the electronica side of band mastermind, Ryan Lum’s musical influences. There has been some slight controversy over LSD’s “sound change” and band member relationships, but all of that seems ludicrous to the mellow, well-adjusted Lum. He’s always created the music for Love Spirals Downwards using whatever inspiration happened to hit him, be it a fine dining experience, an exotic vacation, a shamanic vision, or just simply a new piece of gear to fiddle around with. Although a philosopher at heart, searching for his own personal truth in life, Ryan isn’t a terribly serious artist with an attitude or an agenda. He just likes to make music for the fun of it.

Interview by DJs Anji Bee & Justin Jay. Intro written by Anji.


Anji: So this time around, we’re going to talk about the band, your new album, musical influences, and then just generally shoot the bull. 
Justin: And we’re not going to mention fire tonight. 
Ryan: Yeah. We won’t mention fire or stripping. 
Anji: Or Goth clubs? 
Ryan: Oh, anything, as long as there’s no fire or stripping. (Laughs) Last time, that’s all we talked about. 
Anji: Yeah, that Coven 13 show seemed to make a really big impression on you. 
Ryan: The one with the fire and the stripping? Or our show there? 
Justin: Actually, that <your show> was really cool. You guys did the cover of that Fleetwood Mac song. 
Ryan: Yeah, “Dreams.” 
Anji: It was so good. I wish I had a recording of that.
Ryan: Cool. We were surprised it worked good. When we first started jamming it, experimenting, it was fun — funny fun. But then it was like, “Damn! This sounds good. Let’s play it tonight!“

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