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.”
Some beats were crafted from drum ‘n’ bass loops, Steinberg ReCycle, or a Roland TR-606. Also included is a heavier dose of synths — a Roland Juno-106 for bass lines and string pads and a Korg Prophecy for arpeggiated leads and washes. The mix is rounded out by Lum’s expertly treated guitar strums and drones, though he admits that on this album guitars were added as “an afterthought.” Some of the seemingly endless sustained guitar notes were run through a Lexicon PCM 70. “It’s a very thick, gorgeous reverb,” he says. “The album wouldn’t have been as lush without that thing.” Lum also used a Sony MDMX-4 to sync Perry’s vocals to his MIDI sequences.
Lum’s year and a half working with his mechanized friends resulted in an album of uncommon character. Perry maintains her elegant shyness rather than adopting a found diva’s brash stance. And the organic feel of Lum’s experienced guitar playing smooths out the gushing beats by adding mellow polyrhythmic contrast. Neither raging club music nor the subdued lull of the band’s past records, Flux is a musical anomaly that fits with Lum’s outlook on drum ‘n’ bass as a whole. “It used to be kind of lifeless, mindless dance music,” he says. “Now people are putting other things into it: more soul, more emotion. It changed from a purely dancefloor kind of music into something more varied, more diverse. It has a life of its own.”
Certain sounds or features on new equipment can inspire Lum musically. “Getting new gear — for me — is what makes records. I am just amazed at how much great stuff is out there. It’s such a fun time to be making music.”