We are currently finishing up some new tracks for an EP/CD-Single to be released in the Spring of 1997. It’ll be quite unlike anything we’ve released before. Also, I think it’d be appropriate and fun to end the year with my (Ryan’s) favorite releases of 1996.
California’s LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS is an enchanting outfit indeed! For those of you who aren’t familiar with LSD, please allow the words of vocalist Suzanne Perry and guitarist Ryan Lum to soak into your soul; just as their music does much of the same. LSD were formed out of two minds swirling towards one goal: to make ethereal music. And this Los Angeles-based duet have done nothing but make ethereal, transcending music on their two LP’s for the Projekt label (who have since relocated to Chicago). While the band are in the mid-way stages for their as-yet-to-be titled third LP, I urge anyone into billowing vocals and celestial guitar work to check out their latest release titled, “Ardor.” Ascending with LSD…
Requiem: You’re currently pursuing degrees at the university there, but what led you to start the on musical side of things?
Suzanne: l’ll answer that one. That’s a neat question
Ryan: Well, it was kind of something I had always been doing… It was never like, “I’m going to quit school to make music.” I never looked at music as something that I wanted to pursue seriously. I enjoy doing it, and it doesn’t take up that much time. So I’m going to school and whenever the time struck me to make music, I go off on my own way.
Suzanne: So what was the question again? Sometimes he changes it when he answers it (laughter).
Continue reading Interview in Requiem Vol. 6, Winter 1996Here’s the latest information I received from Echoes regarding our recently taped performance. Check their website to find out what local radio stations you can hear this on:
December 13, 1996
A Living Room Concert with Love Spirals DownwardsActually, it’s a bedroom concert since that’s where Suzanne Perry and Ryan Lum of Love Spirals Downwards have their home studio. We visit the duo in their Los Angeles boudoir, where they unfold the delicate filigree of their music in an intimate performance for the heavenly voice of Perry and the acoustic guitar of Lum, playing music from across their 3 albums, including the latest, Ever (Projekt).
Interview by Philip H. Farber
Love Spirals Downwards is only nominally a band. Really, they are something more of a recording project undertaken by the duo of Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry, just having fun with their music in a home studio. The result, though, has been three albums of atmospheric, ethereal music that has the ability to transport the listener in remarkable ways. Lum and Perry have degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively. The effectiveness of the music makes one wonder how much of their academic training plays into their art, though they tend to deny any specific influence. Their first two albums, Idylls and Ardor, were critically acclaimed, and even if this isn’t exactly the stuff of top-forty hits, they developed a solid following. Ever, their latest effort (on the Projekt label), will likely take these musicians even farther, although that may not have been their intention in recording it.
PHF: I’m only familiar with your current album, Ever. Are the previous two albums similar in tone?
Ryan: They are similar in a certain respect. I think they are very different in a certain respect. We don’t like to make the same album. Once we’ve done it, we like to move on and do something different. The first one, Idylls, is more dreamy-sounding, more eastern, more like Indian music, not much intelligible English. The guitars are more processed. It’s a floaty-airy kind of record. The second one, Ardor, is more poppy, I guess? We have some structured pop songs. She sings in English a bit more. There are less effects on the guitars. Ever branches out in all different directions. Each of the previous two had a certain sound that was at the core of it all. Ever just went off every which way that we indulged ourselves in.
PHF: What’s the creative process that goes into a Love Spirals Downwards album?
Ryan: We develop it and do it all at home. We’ve got our own home recording studio. We’ve had it for years, and have just been growing and expanding it since then. We’re pretty well equipped to do it all home. In fact, the way we write, too, we have to do it at home. We don’t make up ten or eleven songs and say, ‘Okay! Time to go to the studio and record all the songs!‘ I’ll have some rough sounds or ideas and I’ll record them down on tape or into the sampler, and from there I’ll start getting more ideas. It will build from what I previously recorded. That would be a very costly, practically impossible, thing to do in the studio. We would be racking up the kind of budget of Sgt. Pepper’s or something like that. I’ll do the music and then afterwards I’ll give it to Suzanne and we’ll record her parts. Very often, especially on this album, I’ll record some more instruments after she does her parts, to let her influence me a little bit, too. It used to be that I would do all the music, give it to her, she did the vocals and that was that. Now I kind of vibe off her a little bit.
PHF: Do you play live much?
Ryan: We started doing live shows last year. Our first album came out in 1992. We did our first live show in 1995. It just shows that we are essentially more of a recording project than a live band. We’ve actually gotten pretty good at doing the live thing, if I can not speak so modestly. One reason that we didn’t play live before is that we had no real band. It was just the two of us. It would be kind of hard to recreate our weird sound live, just the two of us. The way we did it, and still do it — I might change it a little bit in the future — as it has been up to now, it’s all acoustic, kind of an Unplugged thing, just me on acoustic guitar and her singing. It works out very well, probably because at the core of all of our songs, that’s what it is. That’s usually how I write the songs. I lay down one acoustic guitar track on tape and build it up in the studio from there. It’s a quite powerful setting, too. People have to get quiet and listen, open up their ears. I don’t see how it would be better if we got a huge band or anything.
PHF: Is there anything that you hope that your audience will experience or take away with them from your music?
Ryan: I guess the kinds of things that I experience when I listen to my music, or music that I enjoy listening to. More of a spiritual experience. Some kind of musical listening experience that guides them in a higher direction. Not higher like taking drugs, but lifting them up a little bit, engaging their spiritual dimension.
PHF: Do your backgrounds in philosophy and psychology influence your music?
Ryan: It’s hard to say what in your psyche influences other parts of your psyche. I am what I am. I don’t consciously think I’m making philosophy in my music or anything like that. It’s guess it does cross over. It’s part of my whole world-view. It’s hard to separate out philosophy and art and religion and music. It’s just kind of the way I look at things, holistically. Suzanne is the psychology person… I don’t think psychology comes in too much into her lyric and vocal stuff. She does survey research, social policy research. It’s what she did in graduate school.
PHF: Has your music gotten to the point where you can do it full time? Or do you have day jobs?
Ryan: It’s teetering on the gray area between it. I guess it wouldn’t support the both of us. It might support one of us. It’s not something that either of us have these big hopes and dreams or even desires for. Suzanne only works on music once in a while. It’s usually me that is constantly working on stuff. Even for me, I don’t think I could work on music all the time. It would probably drive me nuts a little bit. It wouldn’t be as fun or special if that was always what I was doing…
As far as recording goes, it just when ideas are happening. Things aren’t always flowing. When they do come, that’s when I really work a lot. Other times, I won’t work for months. It depends on how ideas are coming and how inspired I feel.
PHF: I just noticed that Love Spirals Downward equals LSD…
Ryan: We were aware of that when we made the band name. We didn’t intend to align ourselves with the drug or anything like that. It’s hard to say. We thought it was kind of cool, because our music has a drug-like or spiritual effect, something a little different than your everyday consciousness. It was an interesting parallel, I guess. We were trying to find a band name to send out with our demo tapes. Since we didn’t play live, we had no need or purpose to find a band name. When the time came, we were searching. It’s tough to find a band name. Originally, we thought of Love Spirals Upwards. We went out one night and at two or three in the morning, we were listening to a show on a public radio station, some new age talk show. We were both kind of tired and getting kind of loopy. The lady started talking about love spiralling upwards and upwards… It stuck with us from there. We were calling it that for maybe a week. A friend pointed out that if you change it to “Downwards” instead of “Upwards,” you get the LSD acronym. We said, ‘okay, why not?‘
Suzanne: I just got back. I was driving like a mean person. When people piss me off at work, I drive really scarily. I really hate those people who run the red lights… they all band together and five of them go… So I pull out in front of them all and hope that they’ll clip me… in my demolition vehicle. I’ve got an old car and I thought about buying a new one…
PHF: I’ll ask you what I asked Ryan… Does your background in psychology influence your music?
Suzanne: I don’t think anything that I do plays into my music too much. That’s what’s so weird about it. I keep completely separate lives as far as music goes, and then the rest of my life. I don’t even remember that I do music, most of the time. It’s not like I’ll be at work or in my regular day and I’ll think about music, or a song, or performing, or anything — unless I’m worried about it. I look at it as a time to, not necessarily escape, but it’s a different time, a time when I’m different than I am usually. I don’t spend a lot of time bringing either world into the other. When you say “psychology” to me, I think about my work. Because of the type of psychology I do. I do research, so it doesn’t really fit with the music. Maybe if I were a clinical psychologist, or if I were into eastern philosophy and how that relates to spiritually. There are different types of psychology. There’s the touchy-feely psychology people, and the hard science psychology people. I’m more the hard science type.
PHF: Is there anything that you’d like your audience to experience or take with them from your music?
Suzanne: I really don’t think about it. I hope people have a good experience, or a positive experience, but beyond that, I don’t expect people to get much from it. That’s not my intention when I make it. I don’t even know why I do it. It’s fun for me. It’s fun. When you get past that, you get in trouble. Nobody ever experiences anything like you want them to. And who am I to want people to experience in a certain way? Beyond that, I can’t even control that… I can’t control if people are going to buy it, or even care about it. I really loathe the music business. At the same time, I’m not the fluffy artist, ‘Like, I hope people will get this from my art, because it’s, like, the universal language…‘
Ryan: Listening to your own music is kind of like looking at yourself in the mirror. Everyone else in the world can look at you and see you, but it’s hard to perceive your own self. There’s too much you know about yourself. Often, I’ll have a really great time listening to it. Other times, I’ll hear all the mistakes… It’s kind of painted by all those things that only I know and no one else knows.
LOVE SPIRALS DOWN IS DECIDEDLY UNUSUAL
By Phillip H. Farber
Love Spirals Downward is only nominally a band. Really, they are something of a recording project undertaken by the duo of Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry, just having fun with their music in a home studio. The result, though, has been three albums of atmospheric, ethereal music that has the ability to transport the listener in remarkable ways.
“We develop it and do it all at home,” explains Lum. “We’ve got our own home recording studio. We’ve had it for years and have just been growing and expanding it. We’re pretty well equipped to do it all at home. In fact, the way we write, too, we have to do it at home. We don’t make up 10 or 11 songs and say, ‘Okay! Time to go to the studio and record all the songs!’ I’ll have some rough sounds or ideas and I’ll record them down on tape or into the sampler, and from there I’ll start getting more ideas. It will build from what I previously recorded. That wold be a very costly, practically impossible, thing to do in the studio. We would be racking up the kind of budget of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ or something like that.”
Their first two albums, Idylls and Ardor, were critically acclaimed, and even if this isn’t exactly the stuff of Top 40 hits, they developed a solid following. Ever, their latest efforts, will likely take these musicians even farther, although that may not have been their intention in recording it.
“I really loathe the music business,” Perry exclaims. “I really don’t think about it. I hope people have a good experience — or a positive experience — but beyond that I don’t expect people to get much from it. That’s not my intention when I make it. I don’t even know why I do it. It’s fun for me. It’s fun. When you get past that, you get into trouble. Nobody ever experiences anything like you want them to. And who am I to want people to experience in a certain way? Beyond that, I can’t even control that… I can’t control if people are going to buy it, or even care about it.”
Continue reading Daily Freeman, Nov 29, 1996On Friday November 15 at about 8 PM we will be doing a live on-air performance on KUCI, a radio station in Orange County, California. We will be performing 5 or 6 songs, as well as doing an interview. For those who live out of its range, they are hoping to do a live internet broadcast of this. Regardless, it will be available on the internet soon after. I’ll tell you where to find it as soon as they tell me.
Also on November 14, we will be recorded live at our studio as part of the “Living Room Concert” series of the nationally syndicated radio show Echoes. I’ll let you know here when it will be aired. And on November 16, for those in the area, don’t miss the Steve Roach show in Santa Monica. He’s one of the most amazing live (as well as recording) artist I’ve ever experienced and highly recommend seeing him.
“Making Darkwaves Over Chicago”
by Dan Dinello
PROJEKT’S TWO-NIGHT SHOWCASE A SUCCESS.
The gothic underground emerged in Chicago for the two-day Projekt festival, a celebration of the label’s “ethereal, gothic, dark ambient” music. Featuring nine acts that rarely perform live — including the debut of Projekt creator/owner Sam Rosenthal’s own group, Black Tape for a Blue Girl — the festival lured fans from all over the globe.
Many hardcore goths were so anxious to gt inside that each night several hundred vampires, angels, witches, martyrs, undertakers, velvetized medievalists, and pierced, rubberized fetishists lined up outside the ornate Vic Theatre and risked massive makeup meltdown under the hot June sun. Once inside, they were immediately entranced by the festival’s most evocative music as tribal-ambient musician Steve Roach opened the show on both nights. Surrounded by stacks of keyboards & assorted percussion, enmeshed in organic electronic cables, Roach appeared to be wired into his instruments. He played nonstop, hour-long sets of turbulent environmental noise, primal rhythms, and cascading drones dominated by thunderous blasts of a didgeridoo.
In 1983, Rosenthal created Projekt in his hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a vehicle for his own music. For ten years he operated in Los Angeles, adding groups who reflected his dark personal aesthetic. Now living in Chicago, Rosenthal used the festival to call attention to his cult label. “To prove you’re real, you have to play live,” he says. Mysterious atmospherics and turbulent moods characterize the Projekt sound/image: Projekt fills the dark ethereal void created when British avant-pop label 4AD — original home of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil — abandoned the doom-laden style and its gothic fans.
“It’s a compliment to be compared to 4AD,” says Rosenthal. “They put out some great stuff.”
Lycia played withing a thick graveyard fog that often obliterated guitarist/vocalist Mike VanPortfleet & Vocalist Tara VanFlower. Their dark, shimmering space-out music was initially mesmerizing but lacked variation. Love Spirals Downwards and Soul Whirling Somewhere embraced a bare-bones presentation, eschewing visual effects, gothic-styled clothing, and all instrumentation but acoustic guitar. LSD fared best: The audience was enraptured by Suzanne Perry’s airy angelic voice, serene as a soft breze. SWS’s gothic folk-singer Michael Plaster missed the layered electronic textures of his albums. His fragile, mournful voice seemed lost in the cosmos.
Eden, marked by Sean Bowley’s morbidly intense vocals, started slowly but reached apocalyptic power by the end of their set. Arcanta evoked a mystical/religious atmosphere through sacred chanting, haunting percussion, & majestic melodies. Attrition’s driving industrial-lite dance rhythms and Thanatos’ standard rock instrumentation provided variation. Thanatos’ William Tucker tore off angry, scorching guitar leads next to sneering vocalist Padraic Ogl. Their set was somewhat clouded by distractingly inappropriate militaristic/Nazi imagery and cheesy video effects projected behind the band.
Clearly the highlight of the festival were Black Tape for a Blue Girl. Oscar Herrera and Lucian Casselman sang melodramatic vocals amid heavy smoke and blue/magenta light. Each song seamlessly flowed into the next w/ambient transitions provided by Mera Roberts’ sorrowful cello & Rosenthal’s swirling electronics. After moving from aching romance to passionate bliss to tortured betrayal, Black Tape ended the festival on a quiet note.
Though Love Spirals Downwards’ Ryan Lum reported that his un-gothic orange psychedelic shirt got mocked by vampires, and despite Ogl spitting up wine on the Electric Hellfire Club’s Thomas Thorn, there was a community feeling in the air. Band members hung out in the audience to hear the other bands and talk to fans. Performers and audience were unified through the music. LSD’s Suzanne Perry said, “I felt like it was gathering of old friends from all across the country.”
Enough tickets were sold for Rosenthal to declare the festival a success and entertain the idea of putting on another one next year.
The domestic release of our new full-length Ever was right on schedule and should now have made its way to stores. It will soon be released in Europe. If you are having trouble finding it, either here or abroad, you can order directly from Projekt. We hope that you’ll check out both Ever and the Sideways Forest CD-single as they are quite different from each other. Apart from the “Sideways Forest” track, the other 2 songs on the CD-single are unavailable elsewhere and are unlike anything else we’ve released.
Projekt has some very nice color posters for Ever as well as a new Love Spirals Downwards t-shirt. Try contacting Projekt or calling their 800-CD-LASER phone number for more information.
For next year, plans are being made for some West Coast and East Coast shows. I’ll post more about that later as more information develops.
Bryan Reeseman interviewed Ryan for a profile on Love Spirals Downwards in New Age Voice Magazine. Check out their Q & A.
Bryan: Previous L.S.D. albums have featured an ethereal, airy sound which equally balanced the vocals, guitars, and synths. What can we expect from the new album?
Ryan: Actually there’s never been that much in the way of sythns; perhaps there’s 2 songs each on Idylls and Ardor that have sythns. As far as instruments go, it’s always been more of a guitar –particularly acoustic guitar– based sound. Ever, our new album, sort of paradoxically, goes more into both a more stripped down acoustic guitar and vocal sound, to a more all electrionic sampler/analog synths and drum machine base.
Bryan: How did you choose the direction for “Ever”?
Ryan: It just sort of happens on its own. Getting new equipment and always growing as a person makes it always new and different.
Bryan: Was the trip-hop mix of “Sideways Forest” a one-shot deal or can we expect more unusual songs from L.S.D. in the future?
Ryan: Unusual? I guess for what some people might expect of us, but I’m fairly certain that our next album after Ever will be made more like that song, with the samplers and analog gear we have, rather than a more guitar-based album again. For years, I’ve wanted to do more music like that, but it’s been only recently that I’ve had enough gear to do it.
Bryan: Do you get a lot of comparisons to the Cocteau Twins? Does that grow tiring?
Ryan: We’re used to, but it’s been 2 years since our last album came out, so it’s been a while since I remember reading any reviews of us comparing us to them. As time goes on, I doubt that that comparison will be made much anymore.
Bryan: Your live show has always been stripped down to you on acoustic guitar and Suzanne on vocals. What is the reason for this? Will this continue or do you anticipate perhaps bringing along a keyboard player and/or drummer as well?
Ryan: I doubt it. We have been doing our shows all-acoustic because we found that it was the best way for us to play live. I don’t think that we’d necessarily sound better if we were to get a drummer and more guitarists and become a loud band. The way we do it now really brings out the beauty in our music. Plus, there’s nowhere for us to hide this way, so people can see that we really know how to play, which has surprised a lot of people who thought we need lots of effects to sound good. So live, it’s like we’ll use no effects and sound even better than our records.
Ever, our new full length CD, still looks right on track for being released on the week of September 15, 1996. What that boils down to is you won’t see it in stores until October, but you will be able order it direct from Projekt that week. It’s hard for me to describe what it sounds like, but everyone at the label seems to agree that Ever is different than our previous albums. Sideways Forest, our new CD-single, has been out for about a month now. The label tells me that the trip-hoppy “Quantum Remix” of “Sideways Forest” (which is only on the CD-single) has been getting a bit more radio and club play than normal.
We have no upcoming shows planned and it seems that we are done playing live for the year. If this changes, I’ll mention it here. We are planning on doing more shows next year.
