The All Music Guide has posted a review of Flux. Not sure why Tom Schulte only credited Suzanne by name and neglected to mention the album’s composer, but here it is:

Picking up on the ear-catching, edgy segmented rhythms of the breakbeat wave on Flux , Love Spirals Downward[s] updates their sound, leaving the creative core intact. It’s all about texture in this multi-layered album of Suzanne Perry’s atmospheric vocals, brightly strummed acoustic guitar, and urgent electro-beats. While Perry’s long phrasing meets the moderate rhythms to imply a midpoint, ocean coast sonic waves ebb and flow over the listener intoxicatingly. Indeed, “Sound of Waves” is the name of one of these undulating tracks. Swirling and merging, this duo’s techno-psychedelic (psychedelia implied by the gentle nod of the content without considering their titular acronym) ballads of love lost or failed (“Psyche,” “By Your Side,” and “I’ll Always Love You”) are constructed in a way that owes as much to the accessibility of pop as it does to current forms of electronica.  — Tom Schulte

For the record, “Psyche” (and “Ring”) feature Kristen Perry’s vocals/lyrics. Note also that “Sunset Bell” features Jennifer Ryan Fuller’s vocals. And you might want to know that Ryan Lum composed, performed, and produced every song on the album.

Projekt sent us a review of Flux by Skaht Hansen of Pitchfork Media:

Rating: 9.3 

For years, Love Spirals Downwards have been the mascot leaders of Chicago- based Projekt records.  Epitomizing the label with their lush, casually paced guitars and siren vocals, Love Spirals Downwards have created their own little niche in the ambient gothic world. 

The latest album from the band, Flux , is more of the same stuff we’ve come to expect from the California-based duo with one key exception — over all of the hypnotic aural dreamscapes that have made up Love Spirals Downwards is the introduction of jungle beats.  Very weird, and something that makes you instinctively pop the disc out and make sure you put the right album in.  But it’s true. 

The combination of gothic trance and jungle rhythms isn’t something that you’d probably expect to be found on the Projekt label, or any other gothic or dark ambient label that’s trying to take itself seriously. However, within minutes of listening to this disc, you’ll think that Love Spirals Downwards has been doing it for years and everybody else is just way behind the times. 

Much less like a prelude to a dance remix, and more like an integral part of the music, electronic drums are used here in a tempo that’s plenty fast, but subdued enough to not be the foreground of the songs.  Rather, the foreground remains the interaction between effect-heavy guitar and other-worldly vocals.  Songs stand out as clearly futuristic, perhaps paving the way for a new interaction of genres that hadn’t previously been conceived. 

Slacking back and listening to “Sound of Waves” or “Ring” easily lets you believe you’ve been somehow privy to a CD warped back in time from ten years in the future.  We’ll be anxiously awaiting the next album. 

-Skaht Hansen