The April 2nd “100% Podsafe” issue of iProng Magazine features an interview with Anji discussing Lovespirals, going podsafe, getting into podcasting, music licensing, live performance vs studio recording, and much more. Also included this issue is a great article on eMusic vs Amazon downloads, interviews with fellow podsafe artists Geoff Smith and Natalie Gelman, and an article with Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes, who released their new single to the Podsafe Music Network.
100% PodSafe Edition, iProng Magazine Artist Feature on Lovespirals
For someone who isn’t familiar with Lovespirals, how would you describe it to them?
Lovespirals is the musical duo of multi-instrumentalist and producer, Ryan Lum, and me — Anji Bee — the vocalist, lyricist and co-producer. We write and record all of our music together in our own home studio. As such, our music has a very intimate feel. Our sound doesn’t follow any particular genre model, instead, we play what we feel at the moment. We tend towards very melodic, bittersweet, and dreamy music that focuses on beautiful vocal harmonies and soulful guitar work, with liberal sprinklings of electric piano.
There’s always been a sort of tug of war in Lovespirals between jazzy electronica and folky rock. Each of our releases have come upon a different solution to this tension between the modern and vintage sides of our musical personalities. One the one hand, we both love the old vinyl albums we grew up with as kids, but on the other, we’re drawn to contemporary music and production techniques. The interesting thing about this is that while the casual listener assumes a song like “Caught in the Groove” from Long Way From Home was recorded with a full band, in actuality Ryan programmed the drums using a keyboard controller and samples, the piano is recorded with midi, and the guitars and bass were performed one track at a time in ProTools.
The thing is, just because we’re using computer based recording techniques doesn’t mean our music has to sound like it was made with a computer, you know? We began working together in 1999 making dance club tracks that were much more overtly sample-oriented electronica, but over time, we’ve learned how to evolve those same tools to create music that sounds, well, more musical. Over the past 10 years we’ve flirted with jazz, blues, folk, and world music in combination with electronica and dream pop – which is actually the original background of the band.
Lovespirals were predated by Love Spirals Downwards, which was what Ryan originally named the band in 1991 when he signed to Projekt Records. Back then he was working on 8 track tapes with a singer by the name of Suzanne Perry. As Love Spirals Downwards, he released 4 albums and a career retrospective, before shortening the name and working with me as Lovespirals. Projekt just reissued their first 2 albums in an expanded and remastered digipac format. That early music is a bit darker than ours, and appeals mainly to the gothic crowd. Their later albums were more electronica oriented, particularly the last one which was Ryan’s transition to the drum n bass sound that he and I began our career together with.
How did you end up being both a podsafe musician and podcaster?
I started the Chillin’ with Lovespirals podcast back in June of 2005 to share information and music from our then-upcoming new album, Free & Easy. I’d been itching to start a podcast for several months and it just seemed like a band podcast was the perfect project to start out with. I used to be a college DJ, and then I was an Internet DJ, so it was pretty no-brainer to become a podcaster! And we already had our own recording studio, so it just made a whole lot of sense.
Because I am a complete music junky, I really wanted to do a music show, as well as the band podcast. In 2005 the concept of podsafe music was still very new, so The Chillcast got off to kind of a slow start because I was individually emailing artists individually for permissions. Luckily though years of interaction with indie bands online via sites like mp3.com, SoundClick, Garageband, and the like, I knew lots of great bands that were savvy with web promotions. I’ve turned a lot of bands onto the podsafe music scene, which is a passion of mine to be sure.
How has podsafe music affected your career as a musician?
The podsafe music movement was really just a natural evolution of all the Internet promotions I’d been doing for the band since our inception in ’99. Back then I was heavy into mp3.com where we actually made money from track streams and CDR sales, and then I began DJing on Live365 when it began. I was doing the Garageband thing… then the LastFM thing. I got our music on Pandora. I just try a little of everything online to see what works and where the best music scene is. Podcasting is one more of those things. But a podcast is so much more interesting than a static playlist on Internet radio or a single audio file streaming on a site. There’s more personal interaction and creativity there. And the fact that podcasts and blogs are combined, plus their availability through iTunes etc, gives them even more reach and potential for long tail discovery. Being involved with the podsafe music community has helped to introduce our music to a whole new crowd of people who might not have heard of us otherwise. It’s impossible for us to play every city, state, and country, but you can hear a podcast internationally. And our CD sales reflect that international reach. Heck, I just sent a CD order to Portugal today!
How else do you promote your music?
One of the more exciting ways our music is promoted is via licensing to TV and cable. The first placement the band ever got was for a song called “Psyche” with guest vocalist, Kristen Perry, on Dawson’s Creek. The music supervisor had somehow heard of the band and contacted Projekt for permissions out of the blue. “Psyche” is listed on iTunes as their most popular track, and I suspect we can contribute that to Dawson’s Creek in no small part. The second most popular LSD song on iTunes is the 1998 remix of “Sunset Bell,” which I’ve seen listed online as having been included on the show La Femme Nikita — even on Wikipedia — though we were never contacted about that. Lovespirals’ music has been included on multiple shows for MTV and VH1 as well as E!, WE, A&E, HGTV, Travel Channel, and lots of others. I think Oprah was probably the most fun inclusion on TV. We’ve also been on some DVDs. No films or commercials yet, but hopefully soon.
What else should we know about you and your career?
Lovespirals just released our 3rd CD, Long Way From Home, in late October 2007, followed by the digital-only Motherless Child EP, which features remixes by podsafe artists Karmacoda, MoShang, and Hungry Lucy, amongst others. We are wrapping up a remix contest now with PeaceLoveProductions for the new album single, “This Truth,” and plan to release a digital-only EP with some of these remixes. Since our most recent album is so very not-electronica, I thought fans of that side of our music would appreciate hearing my voice and lyrics in a remixed format — plus its always fun for me to hear other musical interpretations of my songs. I am also looking into releasing a CD of our favorite Lovespirals remixes at some point, for those that prefer to buy their music in a physical format — they’re still out there, believe it or not! Oops — just got a CD order come in as I typed this. Ha ha!
The past year or two we haven’t gotten out to play many live shows. We’ve found that the amount of time and effort it takes to organize and prepare for shows and tours is too draining. Honestly, we would rather be writing and recording new music than revisiting our past works. I guess you could say we are more like recording artists than performing artists. But as someone who enjoys live music, I understand the fans interest in seeing us perform. So for this album we decided to try something new. The weekend of our album release, we performed in Second Life on PodShow Island. It turned out to be a really cool event that was simulcast via multiple audio streams to 760 listeners in the US, UK, and Europe in addition to the maxed out sim in Second Life. So that was really exciting. And then we took the recorded audio and released it as an episode of our podcast which has had about 12,000 requests. Would we get that many folks at a gig in LA? Probably not.