I received Idylls in the mail from Projekt and put it in my CD player… After commenting on it being better than anything the Cocteau Twins have done since Lullabies, a friend angrily takes it out. But it’s true. The intensity quickly lost by the ‘C-word’ is present ten-fold here… LSD have released a CD on the increasingly amazing Projekt label, entitled Idylls, in addition to a contribution to the Fifty Years of Sunshine comp. and a flexi from Altered Mind, an LA based ‘zine. Upcoming plans include a track on the Black Tape cover CD and a second CD. All can be acquired by writing Projekt: Darkwave… Luckily I used my summer’s journey across this “Grey Land” of ours (pun intended) as an opportunity to meet with friends old and new and spent a wonderful afternoon with Ryan and Suzanne of Love Spirals Downwards… Here are some extractions from our very informal interview…

r = Ryan

s = Suzanne

m = me

We’ll skip the babble about early Ministry…

r: I’m mad. I just realized we’re going to miss Taco Bell tonight.

m: A friend of mine asked me where I wanted to eat lunch today and , of course, I said that I had to eat at Taco Bell. It’s the fast food chain of choice for both of us. The Projekt crew are down with Taco Bell.

r: We used to have a thing for Subway earlier in the year. The Veggies and Cheese six inch is $1.99 and when the Cold Cut Combo goes on sale it’s $1.49, so when I was living in Santa Barbara I would buy the Cold Cut Combo because it was 50 cents cheaper and I’d go out and find a homeless person and give the meat to them. So look at this, I’m saving money and I’m happy, and I’m giving food to a homeless person.

s: Or you could get a seafood one, if you eat seafood.

m: In French it is “the fruit of the sea.”

s: Les fruits de mer.

r: I can see how that could have archaic origins. I’d be surprised if it was invented last month or something.

I’ll skip the part about the attitude of the French speaking world and various ways to retaliate…

m: Being a band from California, how do you become inspired? It seems — to me, at least — that a place like New England would be more conducive to “gothicness.” How were you originally inspired to do the music you do?

r: How can we be, living out here in Disneyland?

s: Plasticland.

r: In the land of sand and sun and 110 degreee heat and still be inspired to… I don’t know, I think that question would be more fascinating to ask the Arizona people like Lycia or Soul Whirling. I guess what helps us, living out here in LA, is that it is a cosmopolitan city, arguably. We don’t feel locked out from the world.

s: There’s a lot of things around to experience; theatre and music. We go to Indian classical concerts, and that… as far as being “gothic,” it’s funny. When I think of stuff that’s gothic, for me I think of isolation. I think more psychologically how you’re feeling, as opposed to cold weather. So it can be inspiring anywhere.

The “G” word rears it’s ugly head.

m: It’s hard to escape the term gothic while doing music that is emotional.

s. We consider ourselves more “post gothic,” I guess.

r: For us it is this sort of unavoidable term that’s needed to refer to something along this line of music. Picking us out, as opposed to calling us techno or something. It’s just a word. And now there is a good distinction between the rock side and the more ethereal side.

s: When I think of “goth” I don’t see of us fitting in that well.

r: We just do what we do and it gets called whether it gets called.

That said, how did they start?

r: I guess there is an easy way to do it and a hard way. I’ll just do it the easy way… I had been making music for many years, starting off with a four track and then an eight track.

s: He would make music and record it and not send it anywhere. He was cocooning.

r: I didn’t have a singer and I was doing it for myself as opposed to trying to be a famous rock star. It did something for me emotionally, that’s why I have — and continue — to do it. And I guess somehow we got Suzanne…

s: In the meantime, I had been singing. I have a year or so of formal training, but I have been singing always.

r: I guess you just started singing one night. We were jamming something that became the song “Forgo,” and it sounded cool. So we carried it out and found out that we worked together nicely.

s: Nearly everything we made has been put on the CD. We don’t make scratch songs.

r: I do make songs that suck, but we never work them past the early sucky stage.

s: A finished song is never scratched.

m: Making music to be heard is not your motive then, I gather?

r: That’s not the goal. It never was. That’s why I didn’t bother worrying about releasing my early stuff.

m: What prompted you then to eventually send tapes out?

r: Initially we sent a tape to old Ivo and Creation, although we didn’t know what Creation was. We just saw it on the back of the Slowdive EP. 

s: What it was is that we were coming to the end of the summer and we had set a deadline. We did three songs and sent them to three places and figured if no one called us on it, we’d just keep making music.

r: Why did we even send it out? I guess I was recording another band here and they were making a tape to send out to places. So we figured, ‘Hey, we can do that!’

s: So we sent them out and forgot about it.

r: Then Sam wrote us back, surprisingly enough, and gave us positive comments…

s: We didn’t even know Sam or even own any Projekt releases.

r: All I knew about Projekt was a little bit Susan told me about it once and at the time, we didn’t even know the label was called “Projekt” or Black Tape for a Blue Girl. That was summer of ’91.

m: So things went pretty quickly after that.

r: Yeah, fairly quickly.

s: Sam didn’t say we were signed, he said to sent more stuff.

r: But he sent a nice letter, though.

s: And some Black Tape CDs.

r: So we sent him some more songs a few months after that.

s: So he said he wanted us on Grey Land 3.

r: And then he offered us the album. We thought Grey Land 3 was our big thing, that we’d made it onto something cool and then…

s: It’s funny because he sent us an offer and we didn’t answer him for two or three weeks.

r: And he wrote back.

s: And he said “You must not have gotten my letter because most people would have answered by now.”

r: For an album.

s: “Are you not interested?”

r: We waited like a month.

s: And we’re really not flaky.

r: I don’t know what happened. We were living an hour apart at the time and I wanted us to write him a letter together but that didn’t happen. So we got the second letter from Sam and luckily no bad feelings developed.

What do they do in school?

s: I’m in a masters program for psychology.

r: I’m into the philosophy of language, the nature of reference, and meaning of words.

s: That’s funny. Last year you were into the philosophy of the mind.

r: I still love the philosophy of the mind, but no one at my school — none of my professors — are into it. And the philosophy of language relates a lot to it.

Kiwis

s: I love kiwi fruit.

r: (Ponders) I don’t know if I’ve had it. [to Suzanne} Have I?

s: Sometimes he gets vegetables and fruits mixed up, so I have to explain how they look to him. [to Ryan} Kiwi is that green thing with the black seeds.

r: You can explain it all you want, but…

s: It’s brown, fuzzy, and small.

r: I’m not going to know what it is in here.

s: Which part is the sweet part?

m: The sour part is near the skin.

r: Here is a philosophy of language example. Right now she is referring to a class of fruits and how is she doing it? She is referring to it by describing it as a green fruit with black seeds. Its thinks like this I’m into, how we refer to things…

s: You really don’t know what kiwi fruit is?

r: Roughly is what I’m studying.

s: It’s got black seeds… They’re really small.

m: In interviews you clearly make a point that Love Spirals Downwards is not short for LSD, but you put a song on the Fifty Years of Sunshine comp; a compilation celebrating the fiftieth year of the invention of the drug LSD.

r: It seems like it could be a contradiction, but it’s not. Our band name, in a way, reflects our way of making lyrics and our whole attitude towards music. What sounds best is what works.

s: Supposedly it’s not even grammatically correct to say Love Spirals Downwards.

r: We don’t care. It sounds better.

s: People read too much into it, like it has to have a hidden meaning.

r: Yeah, “What does it mean, man?”

s: “Yeah, I get the connection, man.”

r: There’s no connection to get, man. We are not saying “take acid” or “don’t take acid.” Do as you choose.

m: How did you get involved with the comp, then?

r: They asked us. Projekt distributes Silent and they deal back and forth. I guess they thought our name fit with is as a joke. I think the CD celebrates a momentous point in history, without sounding too cheesy. Think about it; I don’t think things would be as they are now if it wasn’t for that.

s: That’s your opinion. Anyway, some people get on our case about it, so we kind of get defensive.

r: We aren’t anti or pro drug, we aren’t anti or pro zero. We make music. We aren’t politicians.

s: We distance ourselves from making stands on issues.

m: You record in a home studio, then mix to DAT. Is that the finished product you put on CD?

r: Yeah, once it’s on DAT, that is it. Nothing changes from there.

m: Do you have any tips for someone putting together their own home studio? Things to do or not to do?

s: Singers don’t buy anything.

r: Become familiar with the recording process before buying stuff. Learn the art and science of sound recording first, then figure out what you need without buying all sorts of junk.

m: Do you plan on playing live?

r: No.

s: We would play live if we had the time.

m: Would you incorporate other people or would you sequence…

r: DAT and a guitar. But we don’t have the time and we don’t care for the rock and roll myth; rule one: a band must play live. Neither of us have any intention of quitting school to be band junkies. Not right now.

Check out a PDF of the Tear Down The Sky 1993 Love Spirals Downwards Interview