Love Spirals Downwards is Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry. They are one of the bands in the line up at the Projekt Festival. They will be hitting the ethereal air waves with their unique guitar and keyboards. This is one of the bands that I can’t wait to see at the festival. – Lou
Interview by Armand Rosamilia
BLACK MOON: How is your relationship with Projekt Records and Sam Rosenthal?
RL: It’s been pretty good. We get along good.
SP: I think they’re good to us. The royalties are really good. They do a good job of promotion. We’ve been able to be friends with them too.
RL: As opposed to purely business associates.
SP: Obviously, some things are all business. They don’t just think about sales.
RL: Given that fact of life, Projekt is good to us.
SP: They’re artists too.
BM: Since you’re under the Projekt cloak of bands, do you think a gothic label is restrictive?
RL: I don’t think we’re gothic.
BM: I don’t think so either. But you are on what’s considered a “gothic” label.
SP: Yes, it’s restrictive, but on the other hand it opens up our music to people who otherwise would not listen to it. I feel the label is restrictive anytime you’re forced into a genre. We try to stay from it if we can. If you meet us, if you’re gothic, you will tend to be disappointed. They try to figure it out. Not everybody thinks that.
RL: Some people might not even like our music but they know of us because of our association with Projekt. I think that the people that truly like our music, for the most part, tend to be gothic. I say that based on going out to play our shows. We really don’t have a goth following. Other Projekt bands might. We get all kinds of people to our shows. I like that.
BM: Has it been a selective group of shows you’ve played?
SP: We’ve played in L.A. three times, once in Santa Ana, Seattle…
RL: We did a brief east coast tour of Boston, Philadelphia (Trocadero) and New York (Bat Cave) and we finished that up with a date in L.A. We just got back from the Mexico show I mentioned before.
SP: We had 1,200 people at that show.
RL: They treated us really good. They showed us some great sights. They took us to fun places, too.
SP: They were nice. They promote your show until you collapse.
RL: The three days before the show when we were there, we did so much stuff. We did so many interviews for the press, television, etc. We had a press conference at the venue. We were on their national morning talk show.
BM: How has the move of Projekt to Chicago affected you?
RL: We don’t see Sam as much.
SP: We don’t go out for sushi anymore.
RL: Since we have faxes and e-mail, the communication is as strong as when they were here. The personal stuff, obviously, is different. We used to hang out and stuff.
BM: How has the band progressed over the years with the releases you’ve put out so far?
RL: The only conscious change we’ve made is that we don’t like the newest album we’re working on to be like the one before it. Other than that, they change because we personally change. As years go by, you think differently. It all comes out in the music. We’re always up to something different.
SP: Oh, yeah! I think I actively seek different experiences —not only music, but in life.
RL: We don’t like to get stuck in ruts and that comes out in our music, too.
BM: I’m sure a lot of other interviewers have asked this question, but I had to ask again: The initials of the band is LSD?
SP: Yeah.
RL: Gee, we’ve answered that so many times I’ve forgotten what the truth is.
SP: We answer it so often that when I answer I feel like I’m giving a boring answer.
RL: It wasn’t really anything. We had to pick a band name because when we sent out the demo tapes we needed a name. We were pressed to come up with a name quickly.
SP: We didn’t have one and we were trying to figure out what to call ourselves. I think this is funny and Ryan gets mad when I tell this, but we were calling ourselves “The Flower People” from Spinal Tap. The whole idea of a band was a joke to us. In L.A., but probably everywhere, you meet people and they’re all in a band. So we thought it was stupid. When we put the demo tape together, we didn’t have a name. The only other band names we had made up were jokes, funny names.
RL: Like Peter Pancreous.
SP: We were listening to the radio one night late to a new age show and the woman was saying “love, it spirals, upwards, upwards!” It really stuck in Suzanne’s head because it was really late. It was 3 or 4 in the morning. We were parked in front of her house. It tripped us out a lot. So we said, “OK, that’s the band name, Love Spirals Upwards.” Then we decided to change it to downwards.
SP: We thought about it. The acronym was LSU, which is Louisiana State University. We thought that having it as LSD was kind of cool. A friend really suggested the change. He thought it fit better. There’s something cheesy about love spirals upward, you know?
BM: I noticed a lot of comparisons to COCTEAU TWINS in the press.
RL: I don’t like comparisons at all. I know it’s inevitable, just because it’s human nature. When you see something new you want to compare it to something that’s already understood by you. Sure, we sound like them in certain analysis, but in a broader sense you could say we sound like 10,000 maniacs if you don’t know music all that well. It depends how far you want to split hairs. Do I mind being compared to them? Yes, if people think we’re trying to be like them or sound like them. I have no aspirations to be them.
SP: It all comes down to a person’s opinion. People like to have their own opinion. I think that comparison just sucks in general. It’s depressing.
RL: It takes the uniqueness away from us and tries to conveniently classify us. The same with comparing us to gothic bands. We’re not a gothic band, we’re not an anything band. We just make pretty music. That’s my goal. Our new album goes all over the place. There’s no genre that we try to align ourselves with. We make pretty, transcending, new music. We work in terms of sounds. To try to sum it up like that is problematic. You’re going to miss something. Am I getting too crazy here?
BM: You were rolling there for awhile. Do you have any shows planned between now and Projekt?
RL: No. We want to keep recording. We’ll take a break for that show and concentrate on recording.
BM: How does the music compare live?
RL: I think its similar. Live is very focused. It’s just me on acoustic guitar and Suzanne singing. We try to play all the songs very emotionally. It’s a very powerful thing. When we record it’s very different. We have all kinds of options, we do all kinds of crazy things. We lay down different instruments, harmonies, and weird guitar sounds. Live is very simple and very powerful. It’s hard to compare the two. Some things are impossible to do live.
BM: Was it easier to play out as you added more shows.
RL: I don’t know if it got easier to do.
SP: It’s more natural now. It’s still hard, in some ways harder. When you play live and you screw up it is an experience.
RL: Even Jerry Garcia, up to the end, used to get nervous before shows. Projekt should be interesting. I still have some time to get nervous about it.
BM: Good luck at Projekt. Lou will see you at the festival.