Temporal: A Collection of Music Past & Present captured the full arc of Love Spirals Downwards’ career, showcasing their evolution from ethereal dream pop to ambient electronica, trip-hop, and drum & bass. Released by Projekt Records in 2000, the album featured 13 tracks compiled and mastered by Lum, including rare tracks, remixes, and the band’s first-ever released live recording. Initially released on CD, the album was later added to iTunes in 2004 and made its Bandcamp debut in 2019 with three additional bonus tracks and high-quality digital audio.

In retrospect, Temporal stands as both epitaph and prologue — the bridge between the analog romanticism of the 1990s ethereal scene and the digital fluidity of 2000s electronica. The album’s very construction reflected that transition: Lum remastered the band’s early 90’s eight-track analog tape recordings, mid-decade sessions that blended samplers into their analog recordings, and fully digital recordings from the late 90s created via computer. The result is not just a retrospective, but a sonic time capsule — one that captures Love Spirals Downwards evolution in both form and medium.

As Lum explained in an interview with Black Magazine that same year, Temporal was not just a label initiative, but a creative opportunity to define the band’s legacy:

“There wasn’t enough material to put out a new album this year, so Projekt suggested we release a ‘best of’ album. I took it a step further by including two recent remixes from Flux and a few other tracks which hadn’t seen much distribution. I liked the idea of doing a retrospective for a few reasons, one of which is that we gained a lot of new fans with Flux. I think Temporal gives a nice summation of our career before that point, and a hint of where the sound will go from here.”

That forward-looking spirit—bridging their past with the evolving electronica of the late 1990s—became central to the album’s concept. Projekt Records’ official album PR described the album’s scope:

“Love Spirals Downwards have continued to evolve, never remaining static in one time or place. This new collection of recent and older songs is true to its title — Temporal — providing new and old fans with a glimpse of where they are and where they’ve been. Following a reverse continuum, Temporal journeys from new dance remixes from Flux, backwards to material from their very first album.”

In a March 2000 interview with Sean Flinn for RadioSpy, Lum downplayed talk of stylistic change, insisting it was all merely surface-level:

“The only thing that’s different in my music is some of the sounds and maybe a little bit of the style, but the vibe is still the same… it still comes from the same place. It’s still atmospheric music; it’s just done a little differently. Some people, I think, try to consciously shock people and make a whole new kind of album. I’m not that radical. It’s still the same “pretty” music.

Flinn agreed, noting that when the tracks are “stacked right next to each other, it does have a real continuous flow.” Lum continued his train of thought, noting that the record would likely divide casual and devoted listeners:

“If they’re true fans and really like the music, they’ll still like it. But if they’re someone who just liked us because it was cool to like us, and really didn’t connect emotionally, then they might not like it — because you’re invested in us for some reason other than a love of the music.”

Lum’s reflections capture a rare self-awareness: an artist measuring his audience not by numbers but by depth of connection. Temporal thus reads as both test and tribute—separating listeners drawn by trend from those moved by resonance.

That tension—between audience expectation and genuine connection—threads through Temporal. It marks the album as both consolidation and quiet risk: a reaffirmation of creative independence even as the duo stepped beyond Projekt’s familiar boundaries.

Sonic Evolution: From Dream Pop to Drum & Bass

Love Spirals Downwards’ earliest releases established them as leaders of Projekt’s ethereal music scene, blending the enigmatic dream pop of Cocteau Twins and medieval mysticism of Dead Can Dance with touches of shoegaze, ambient, and acoustic folk. Jason Moore of Opus Zine described this era as follows:

“The band’s debut, Idylls, and follow-up, Ardor, evoke all that’s good and golden about the vaunted ‘4AD sound’ pioneered by Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil.”

Yet even in their initial stages, Love Spirals Downwards’ sound hinted at the electronic textures that would define their later work. By the time Flux (1998) arrived, Ryan Lum had fully embraced breakbeats and electronica, folding drum ‘n’ bass and trip-hop rhythms into the project’s ethereal foundations.

In his Black Magazine interview, Lum traced this transformation to a gradual shift in listening habits and cultural influences:

“It’s just a matter of my changing interests that marks my music. At the start, I was into 60’s psychedelia, like Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, plus Cocteau Twins, Slowdive and the Shoegazer thing. Seefeel and Massive Attack got me started thinking more electronically and beat-oriented. But I’ve listened to electronic dance music throughout the entire history of LSD — I went to underground raves in the late 80s and all of that — but I hadn’t heard dance music that I would like to create myself until atmospheric d’n’b. For me, it’s the perfect blend of ambient/ethereal electronics and dance beats.”

This perspective underscores that Flux and the remixes featured on Temporal weren’t abrupt reinventions, but the culmination of long-developing fascinations with rhythm, texture, and technology. As Lum reflected in his RadioSpy conversation with Sean Flinn, his attraction to drum ‘n’ bass came from its immersive sound design:

“It’s rare that you see a whole genre of music that’s dedicated to atmosphere. And when I found that years back, it was like, ‘Yes! Right on! I can do this.’” 

Temporal served as both summation and statement — a way to trace that evolution across a single disc. As Lum was quoted in  Side-Line Magazine:

“Temporal shows the progress of the music over time; the similarities as well as the differences… 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.”

Despite this evolution and their growing alignment with electronic music culture, Love Spirals Downwards often found themselves categorized within the gothic music scene, largely due to their long association with Projekt Records. It was a point of mild frustration for Lum, who told Side-Line:

“‘Goth’ is a term that’s haunted us our whole career. We never intended our music to be gothic, but that has been the scene which has supported us most over the years… If someone hears “Misunderstood” and still wants to call us a goth band, whatever! We know we’ve never been easy to categorize. We don’t even know what to call the music ourselves!”

As Lum noted, this mislabeling didn’t always align with their artistic intentions. Nevertheless, Temporal’s carefully sequenced tracklist offered a broader portrait—charting not just their stylistic shifts but the evolving spirit behind them.

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Temporal Tracklist Highlights

Temporal features a carefully curated selection of tracks spanning Love Spirals Downwards’ career, including rare and previously unreleased material. Regarding the selection process, Ryan Lum told Side-Line:

“I basically went through all the masters and picked songs that I especially liked, or thought would be of interest to fans because they were hard to find.” 

This approach resulted in a collection that offers both familiar favorites and hidden gems.

The album opens with a nod to their more recent electronic explorations, featuring two remixes from their 1998 album, Flux. Regarding the remixing process for Temporal, Lum explained to Side-Line:

 “I just called up the original recordings and began remixing them from there. I kept some of the original tracks, created new tracks, cut and pasted some things, and mixed it up. Remixing is strange, because it’s similar to writing a new song, but using things that already exist.” 

These remixes offer fresh perspectives on tracks that already represented a significant shift in the band’s sound.

“Alicia (Remix)” – This 1999 remix of the flamenco-infused Spanish-language drum & bass track from Flux (1998) featuring Rodney Rodriguez on acoustic guitar emphasized rhythm and atmospheric pads over vocal harmonies. It appeared on the Diva X Machina 3 (2000) compilation. On the independently released Flux Deluxe Edition (2023) the song title was amended to “Alicia (Temporal Mix).”

“Misunderstood (I’ll Always Love You Remix)” – Originally from Flux (1998), this 1999 remix added saxophone by Doron Orenstein, showcasing Lum’s first experiment with jazz-step drum ‘n’ bass. Lum would later further explore this genre with Orenstein and vocalist Anji Bee on the Ecstatic EP (2001). On the Flux Deluxe Edition (2023) the song title was amended to “I’ll Always Love You (Temporal Mix).”

“Asleep” – A near-instrumental track created between Ever and Flux, originally appearing on Precipice Recordings Volume 1 (1998) compilation, Lum used a reversed sample of Perry’s voice played on a sequencer, creating a hypnotic, ambient texture. In their Temporal review, Magnet described “Asleep” as a ‘moodist masterwork.'”

“Mediterranea” – Originally released on Across This Gray Land 3 (1991), this track became a live staple and defined the band’s early 4AD-inspired sound with Perry glossolalic vocals. An acoustic version appears on the independently released Love Spirals Downwards Live (2014).

“Ladonna Dissima” – Featured on Idylls (1992), this track was later included on Beneath the Icy Floe Vol. 2 (1994). Perry’s meditative repetition of the Italian inspired phrase ‘la donna dissima’ combines with Lum’s ‘pulsating cold guitars and disjointed drum beats,’ as noted by XTROPY on Rate Your Music.

“Subsequently (Live)” – This live staple from Ardor (1995) emphasized Perry’s emotive glossolalic vocals and Lum’s delicate acoustic guitar work. Compared to the version on Love Spirals Downwards: Live, this earlier mix featured a more prominent reverb effect, reflecting Lum’s evolving production techniques.

“Kykeon” – A dramatic track from Ardor, this song was a staple in the band’s live sets. Lum’s 1993 remix appeared on the legendary Silent Records compilation 50 Years of Sunshine and an Altered Mind flexi-disc included with issue 13″ –both released in 1993– as well as the later retrospective collection, Projekt 100: The Early Years, 1985 to 1995 Projekt Records (2000). An acoustic performance appears on Love Spirals Downwards Live (2014).

“Above the Lone” – This electro-acoustic track from Ever (1996) blended atmospheric guitars with electronic flourishes and became a staple in the band’s later live sets. One such performance appears on Love Spirals Downwards Live (2014), with another featured on the independently released Ever (Remastered Reissue) (2020).

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Compilation and Compilation Albums

Before examining Temporal’s critical reception, it’s worth noting the compilation’s lineage within the 1990s network of Projekt-affiliated and independent label compilations—a vital means by which ethereal and ambient music circulated before the dominance of digital distribution. Several of Temporal’s selections had prior lives on such releases, their inclusion here underscoring the band’s deep entanglement with that scene and its gradual movement beyond it.

One particularly revealing example is “Asleep,” a haunting near-instrumental created sometime between Ever and Flux. As Lum noted on April 27, 1998, in the news section of lovespirals.com, the track appeared on Precipice Recordings Volume 1, “a compilation put out by Pat Ogle’s (formerly of Projekt) new label Precipice Recordings.” Lum added pointedly: “Our song, ‘Asleep,’ can only be found on this compilation and will not be on our new album.” Its eventual inclusion on Temporal not only rescued a lost fragment of the Flux sessions but also symbolically reconnected the band to one of Projekt’s own early architects venturing out on his own label—an echo of Lum’s own trajectory toward independence.

Beyond “Asleep,” Temporal drew from a constellation of notable compilations that chronicled Love Spirals Downwards’ evolution across the decade:

• 50 Years of Sunshine (1993) – Included a remix of “Kykeon.”
• Beneath the Icy Floe Vol. 2 (Projekt Records, 1994) featured “Ladonna Dissima.”
• Beneath the Icy Floe – Projekt Records Sampler (Hyperium Records, 1995) featured “This Endris Night”
• Projekt 100: The Early Years, 1985 to 1995 Projekt Records (2000) featured a remix of “Kykeon”
• Within This Infinite Ocean (Borders, 2001) featured “This Endris Night”
• Projekt: The New Face of Goth (Hot Topic, 2003) featured “This Endris Night”

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Critical Reception

Upon its release in early 2000, Temporal prompted critics to reconsider Love Spirals Downwards’ place within the broader evolution of ethereal and electronic music. Reviewers consistently praised the album’s cohesion and atmosphere, noting how it managed to sound both retrospective and forward-looking — a rare feat for a compilation. In many ways, the critical response mirrored the album’s own premise: a dialogue between nostalgia and renewal.

• Amazon Editorial: “A greatest-hits disc after only four albums? Apparently, when you’re as good as Love Spirals Downwards, you can get away with it.”
• Inside Borders: “Whether you’re relaxing in the dark tranquility of post-first-date bliss, or are swimming in the nostalgia of love lost, this album will  help keep you warm.”
• URB: “Temporal charts the band’s shift in sound, a collection which looks back through the haze… showcasing an increasingly ambient sensibility. It’s all very lovely, a nice sound to chill to after a hard night of pounding kick drums.”
• Magnet: “This retrospective succeeds on a variety of cosmic levels, with lushly crafted dreamscapes that sit proudly alongside Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance.”
• Outburn: “I can’t think of any ethereal band more sonically enchanting or musically daring than Love Spirals Downwards. Hearing early songs like the tenebrous ‘Ladonna Dissima’ illustrates how versatile and adventurous the duo is.”
• Side-Line Magazine: “I love anything this band puts out. This collection of works is no exception. A must-have for any Love Spirals Downwards fan.”
• Satan Stole My Teddybear: “Temporal is a successful best-of collection due to the fact that it can both introduce new listeners to this duo’s wonderful and beautiful music as well as give longtime fans a bonus prize for picking it up. Neither redundant nor unnecessary, Temporal is much more eternal than the title suggests.”
• Lexicon: “Smooth and relaxing as if on holiday. I highly recommend turning the lights down low, slipping in the tub, and relaxing to this new title from Projekt Records.

In addition to servicing publications for reviews and features, Projekt worked directly with retailers to promote the album.

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Promotional Partnerships and In-Store Presence

Projekt Records extended its established promotional strategies for Temporal, maintaining the momentum generated by the unexpected success of Flux two years earlier. Rather than scaling back for what was, technically, a retrospective compilation, the label treated Temporal with the same level of visibility as a new studio release — a sign of both commercial confidence and recognition of the duo’s enduring fan base.

Projekt’s marketing blueprint had already proven effective with Flux, which benefited from nationwide listening-station placement at Borders, Virgin, and Tower Records in 1998. That success clearly informed the label’s decision to replicate and refine the approach for Temporal. But while the scope was familiar, the context was different: this time, Projekt was promoting not an evolving sound but a legacy — and doing so in a way that affirmed Love Spirals Downwards’ continued relevance as they neared the turn of the millennium.

The centerpiece of this campaign was a renewed partnership with Borders Books and Music, where Temporal was featured in listening stations nationwide beginning in February 2000 — timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. This placement was supported by a favorable write-up in the Inside Borders in-store magazine, which praised the album’s “moody, enchanting universe” and described Temporal as an ideal soundtrack for both new romance and nostalgia. The inclusion of a review in a national retail publication marked a notable milestone for Projekt’s promotional reach and reflected the label’s confidence in Love Spirals Downwards’ crossover appeal.

This collaboration built upon a longstanding relationship between the duo and Borders: they had performed an in-store acoustic set at the Chicago Borders Books and Music in 1997 to promote Ever, and Flux had previously featured in Borders’ listening-station program through late 1998. By the time Temporal arrived, that promotional model was not new — but it had become a proven conduit for connecting the band’s introspective sound with a wider audience.

Beyond Borders, Projekt also secured listening station placements for Temporal in several other key independent and chain stores during February and March 2000:

• Twist & Shout — Denver, CO (February 1 – February 29)
• Rasputins — San Francisco, CA (February 1 – March 31)
• Barnes & Noble — Nationwide (February 2 – February 29)
• Virgin Sunset — Hollywood, CA (February 8 – February 22)
• National Record Mart — nationwide (February 22 – March 13)
• Borders — Nationwide (extended placement March 11 – May 16)

Yet even as Temporal reached a broader audience through these well-coordinated campaigns, internal shifts were already underway. Behind the scenes, the same evolution that made the band’s sound so distinctive was beginning to test the limits of Projekt’s aesthetic boundaries — setting the stage for a period of quiet friction and transformation.

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Friction and Farewell: Temporal as Pivot Point

Love Spirals Downwards’ gradual move from ethereal dream pop toward rhythm-driven electronic textures met with hesitation from Projekt Records. Though Ryan Lum’s releases remained among the label’s best sellers, his growing interest in breakbeats and jazz-inflected instrumentation increasingly diverged from Projekt’s darkwave aesthetic. As Lum told RadioSpy in 2000:

“It’s not his cup of tea, but we more or less have artistic freedom to do as we please. I guess being the top label seller doesn’t hurt us in that, either. And, I guess, as we proved with Flux, even though we made an album that’s so different than anything else on the label, people didn’t complain. He thought they were going to say that Projekt — or someone — sold out, and none of that came out. So I guess he saw it was cool. He got a little paranoid at first, but mellowed out.”

Lum was concerned, however, that even the inclusion of live saxophone might test Rosenthal’s patience. In the feature article Flinn penned following their interview, he noted:

“[Rosenthal] actually made a positive comment about the saxophone. He said, ‘You know, it fits somehow,’”
recalled Anji Bee, Ryan’s self-described “partner-in-crime” and recent collaborator on everything from album art to vocals.

Flinn further noted in this feature that Bee “handles a lot of the day-to-day work on the Love Spirals Downwards Web site — answering fan mail, fulfilling orders from their “e-store” and administrating their forums.” Her growing role during the making and promotion of Temporal subtly signaled the band’s next evolution. 

In the wake of Flux, Lum’s experiments began to test the label’s boundaries more directly. His remix of “By Your Side,” intended for Projekt’s Seireenia compilation, was rejected for straying too far from the label’s sound. He next recorded an atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” with Suzanne Perry for Projekt’s Excelsis holiday series — which was also declined. When RadioSpy host Sean Flinn asked whether Lum had “whittled the band just down to just himself” or if he would still be working with Suzanne, he replied:

“The last song we recorded was our Christmas track, ‘The Little Drummer Boy.’ I don’t know exactly how many songs she’ll be singing on. Like on Flux, she sang on about half of them or so, but yeah, she’ll be working with me. I’m sure Anji will be working with me on some of the new tracks… I’m gonna have some more musicians working with me, jazz musicians… On Temporal, the second song, the ‘Misunderstood Remix,’ that’s a preview of my sax player, Doron, and I have a cool keyboard player, Gabriel.”

Lum quietly made “The Little Drummer Boy” available as a free MP3 on lovespirals.com on November 24, 1999 — a small but symbolic act of independence following Projekt’s rejection. Around the same time, he proposed a live album culled from years of DAT recordings, but that too was declined. Instead, Projekt suggested a career-spanning retrospective — an idea Lum embraced as an opportunity to reframe the band’s story.

Meanwhile, Bee was already a constant presence in Lum’s creative world — assisting with album art, managing the band’s online presence, and now contributing vocals on new material that pushed further into the breakbeat territory Projekt had resisted.The two tracks they sent to Sam Rosenthal — “Ecstatic” and “Hand in Hand” — marked an entirely new phase of collaboration. As Lum told RadioSpy:

“Anji here has sung on two unreleased tracks that I made last fall. They’re more of dance tracks that I’m deejaying.”
“Nine minutes long,” Anji added.
“Yeah,” Ryan clarified, “stuff for my DJ sets — I had some acetates made.”

As Bee later joked to Jive Magazine in 2002:

“When we sent Projekt the Ecstatic EP, their advice was to ‘cut out all the crazy drums’ and then they’d be into it. I was like, ‘This is breakbeat music — it’s BASED on the drums, man!’”

While Projekt passed, those same sessions would eventually resurface as the Ecstatic EP (2001), released independently under the name Lovespirals — the moniker that would soon define Lum and Bee’s ongoing work.

After nearly a year of rejections, Lum assembled the proposed retrospective, Temporal: A Collection of Music Past & Present, in November 1999 — the same month he and Bee completed their remix of Claire Voyant’s “Bittersweet.” The compilation drew from every phase of Love Spirals Downwards’ evolution, notably including two recent drum ‘n’ bass remixes, an outtake from the Flux sessions, and a live recording of “Subsequently” pulled from the rejected live album — which Lum later issued independently in 2001.

By the time Temporal was finalized, it represented both an act of reconciliation and quiet reinvention. After a year of rejections and creative detours, Lum had found a way to synthesize the band’s past and present — to honor Love Spirals Downwards’ atmospheric origins while subtly pointing toward the more rhythm-driven, collaborative path ahead. The title Temporal proved apt in every sense — capturing both the passage of musical time and the liminal space between one incarnation of the band and the next.

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Coda: The Uncertain Horizon

In the months following Temporal’s release, Ryan Lum and Anji Bee continued to collaborate on new material, much of it rooted in the drum’n’bass and downtempo sounds that had begun to surface during the Flux era. Yet as Bee later told Chain D.L.K. in 2002, that period was less about definition than exploration:

“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.”

Among those experiments was a remix for Sacramento ethereal act Claire Voyant. Recorded in late 1999, their drum’n’bass reimagining of “Bittersweet” was released the following spring on the German label Accession Records’ compilation Time Again — credited to Love Spirals Downwards. Though technically created during the duo’s formative Lovespirals phase, it stood as a symbolic bridge between identities: the last appearance of the old name attached to the new sound.

That restless energy—half looking back, half pushing forward—lingered in the aftermath of Temporal. The compilation had closed one chapter, but the next was still unwritten. What emerged from that uncertainty would surprise even longtime fans: a return to organic textures, live instrumentation, and a renewed sense of intimacy.

But that’s another story — one that begins with the gentle exhale of Windblown Kiss.