Category Archives: Interview

Mean Streets on ProjektFest LA

Mean Streets So Cal, March 1998, Volume VIII – Issue 9

PROJEKT FESTIVAL: One of the most dramatic and beautiful nights of music awaits you…

By Ned Raggett

About 2000 years ago. plus a few, the Ides of March proved to not be a pretty good day. At least for a balding fellow named Julius Caesar. However, that was Rome and two millennia away, not Los Angeles and the middle of this March.

At the El Rey Theatre on Sunday, March 15, the third Projekt Festival will be hosted for many an appreciative fan, likely providing one of the most dramatic and beautiful nights of music for years. Organized by Projekt main man Sam Rosenthal, the festival, previously held in the in the label’s headquarter city of Chicago, will feature two of Projekt’s flagship bands— Los Angeles’ own Love Spirals Downwards and Rosenthal’s group Black Tape for a Blue Girl — and Santa Barbara’s faith and the Muse (who though not on Projekt are closely associated with the label via Darkwave distribution). Tickets can currentIy be purchased via Los Angeles at Retail Slut on Melrose, in Orange County at Ipso Facto in Fullerton, and through Projekt at 1-800 CD-LASER. All very well, you say, but why should you care?

Simply put, quality, combined with a driving desire to steer away from an easy and obvious norm. Projekt has evolved throughout the 90s as the closest possible equivalent to the 80s glory days of England’s 4AD label — a record business dedicated not to the commercial quick kill but to an overall aesthetic of lush beauty in appearance and sound, shaded throughout with the dark emotional touches too easily summed up and dismissed as “goth.” While it’s no secret that Projekt and associated bands have been far too often seen as a goth label — Rosenthal has jokingly referred to himself as a crazy uncle of goth — in response to such charges in the past, while Faith and the Muse’s William Faith wears white make-up and haystacked black hair like a pro — the three bands featured each have their own specific style and much to offer to the open-minded listener willing to put aside clichéd descriptions in favor of the actual music itself.

Continue reading Mean Streets on ProjektFest LA

Interview in Sturm und Drang, Winter 1997/98

They say that every style has a limited life, from its prosperous origins to decline. There is, however, a current that has been in force for quite a few years and that has not declined at all: the heavenly voices. What began in the 80s with 4AD and continued with Hyperium now stars Projekt, a very successful American label that treasures some of the best ethereal music bands, such as LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS, a Los Angeles duo formed by guitarist Ryan Lum and vocalist Suzanne Perry. In 1992 he made his debut with ‘Idylls,’ followed by ‘Ardor’ and his great and last work,Ever.’

By Sonia Garcia

SUD: What is the meaning of the band name?

Ryan: Love Spirals Downwards? Does it have something to do with the acronyms that are formed with the initials, that is, the psychedelic LSD, and the effect that your music can cause?

Ryan: It’s just a name, we had to call ourselves somehow: it doesn’t mean anything.

SUD: Do you think drugs provide us with a new vision of the world around us?

Ryan: Yes, although it has nothing to do with the name of the band.

SUD: What is really more important: the lyrics themselves or the sound it has?

Ryan: I don’t really see the difference. What matters is the final result of the song.

SUD: Why are the lyrics of the songs never included on the CDs? Are they a secondary aspect of your music?

Ryan: In fact, there is not much to read in our lyrics.

SUD: What is the music scene in Los Angeles like? Could you name a band and the reason for their notability?

Ryan: Good bands in Los Angeles? I don’t know many. Let’s say the VON TRAPPS, formerly known as ELYSIUM.

SUD: Why do you often use Spanish words like “Amarillo,” “Ardor”, “El Pedregal”…? Have you thought about making a song entirely in Spanish?

Ryan: I think we did one some time ago, but I don’t remember. If not, maybe there will be some in the next album.

SUD: What can you tell us about your large Mexican audience? Are they more receptive than Americans?

Ryan: In general, I prefer the Mexican audience, because they have a warmth that is foreign to the American public, although in America we have also done great concerts, if we except the last ones.

SUD: What kind of problems did you have at the last Projekt Festival in Chicago?

Ryan: The conflict arose because at least half of the people who came to party, show off their cloaks and fangs, and make new Gothic friends, in any case not for the music.

SUD: Do you mean that the Goths are more concerned with socializing among themselves?What about music?

Ryan: In general, yes, they only care about themselves, and not about the groups.

SUD: How is your relationship with Projekt and with Sam Rosenthal in particular?

Ryan: We’re doing well. We haven’t seen each other much lately, but we’re still friends.

SUD: Is the acoustic guitar the ideal complement to Suzanne’s voice and vice versa?

Ryan: The two things work together, it’s not a simple combination.

SUD: What do trip hop and drum & bass suggest? Are they styles that influence you?

Ryan: Yes, much more than all those trends that people usually compare us to.

SUD: You can’t complain about the success you’ve had in America, but can you say the same about the treatment of the European press throughout your career?

Ryan: I don’t know. I don’t worry about everything the press says about us. I guess the deal has been favorable.

SUD: Does it bother you that you are included in the Heavenly Voices genre?

Ryan: It’s not a comparison that excites me, but it doesn’t bother me either. In any case, it is always better than being called a gothic band.

SUD: How important have COCTEAU TWINS been for you? What are the similarities and differences between them and you?

Ryan: I like them, but I’m also interested in at least a hundred other groups. I never know what to say when they ask me this.

SUD: How do you explain the journey from the shadows of “Idylls” to the clarity of “Ever”? Have you evolved yourself in the same way?

Ryan: I would describe Idylls, as dark; for me it’s something more than an album that sounds hippie. Indeed, we have changed since 1991… it would be good if it hadn’t been like that!

SUD: Do you want to say something to the readers?

Ryan: Thank you for listening to us. Stay tuned for our new album next year.We hope you like it.

(This was a translation of the original article below)

KUCI 88.9 FM Winter 1997 Program Guide

Interview and photography by Ned Raggett

It’s a beautiful name, Love Spirals Downwards. It calls up so many wonderful images, but the name would mean little if the band wasn’t so good as well. With Ryan Lum on guitars and other instruments and Suzanne Perry on vocals, LSD have created three excellent albums for Projekt Records over the past few years. The most recent, Ever, is quite something; a wonderful wash of Lum’s layered, exquisite acoustic and electric guitar work and Perry’s truly angelic vocals. LSD played an acoustic set on KUCI on Friday, November 15, after which they sat down for a talk about many and varied things — and during which they proved to have, as a duo, one of the best repartees around!

Ned: Ryan has mentioned elsewhere that he was trying to experiment more with electronics on this album. As the singer, what do you try to do on the new album that was different from the past?

Suzanne: I don’t know if ever try and aim for anything, I just see what comes out. The only aim is to do something different — or at least feels different. I don’t necessarily make something different, or consciously try to be different… I don’t know if this makes sense?

Ned: I’ve heard stranger explanations!

Ryan: I lost her!

Ned:  Well,  here’s another question for you, Suzanne…

Suzanne: Ask me a simple one, ‘cause I’m really stupid!

Ned: A simple one it is. Who are your influences, singing or lyrically?

Suzanne: Oh… (pause)

Ned: Never mind, that’s not so simple. Cancel!

Continue reading KUCI 88.9 FM Winter 1997 Program Guide

Projekt Fest 1997 Guide: LSD Interview Feature

Love Spirals Downwards interviewed by Pat Ogl

The duo of Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry had no clear musical ambition —or even a band name— when they contacted Projekt Records. They jokingly called themselves as “The Flower People.” The response to their first full length CD ‘Idylls’ was no joke.  At that time Projekt was run out of Sam’s house with a fairly small advertising budget. Nonetheless the band sold over 10,000 copies. Two years later the bands sophomore effort ‘Ardor’ again sold over 10,000 copies– this time taking far less time to do so. 

Eschewing comparisons to “shoegazer” and “gothic” acts, Love Spirals Downwards have crafted a following that transcends genre and even generational “pigeon holes.” The label has received enthusiastic fan letters from teeny boppers and sitting Circuit Court Judges.The band has gradually evolved over the past five years. ‘Idylls’ dreamy aura, layered acoustic guitars and electronic was taken in an ever so slightly darker direction on ‘Ardor.’ The band’s third release ‘Ever’ combines elements of their acoustic live show with Ryan’s trance ambient influences. Currently a remix single for “Madras,” off the ‘Ever’ CD is in the works.


Ryan: Well, I don’t remember it being that overwhelming of a response. But I suppose that many people that had an initial liking to our music was because our songs are pretty songs, which is something a bit rare in music today

Pat: Don’t you think a good deal of the other artists on Projekt make “pretty” music? I can tell you that there was a pretty big reaction to your songs on that compilation…

Ryan: Sure, most of the rest of the Projekt artist make music that is pretty. But I think that we are the only one’s whose main aesthetic is in making a pretty and otherworldly sort of sound. Most of the others have something else going on in their music as well, more self-expressionistic things. I’m not saying that makes us better or worse than the others, but I think it makes our music stand out a bit, we have a quality that is distinct.

Continue reading Projekt Fest 1997 Guide: LSD Interview Feature

Acoustic Guitar Interview

SOUND SPIRALS UPWARDS

By Bryan Reeseman

“ONE THING I LIKE ABOUT OUR NEW album is that it’s almost impossible to categorize with any of the conventional musical categories,” declares Ryan Lum, guitarist and keyboard player for Love Spirals Downwards. “There are really folky songs, really electronic ambient dance songs, and then these weird, loopy psychedelic songs. I think it all works together really well. It isn’t a huge shock from one to the next.”

Lum and vocalist Suzanne Perry create a lush, inviting sonic template on their third and newest album, Ever. Important components to their sound are Perry’s beautiful, dreamy vocals, Lum’s delicate, sometimes cryptic acoustic six-string melodies, and their integration of swirling keyboards and subtle effects, all of which produce a captivating kind of romantic, ethereal folk.

Live, Lum uses two tunings: standard and E A D G A D, a variation on D A D G A D. “Instead of my first note being D, it’s E,” he says. “That way, all the strings are tuned normally except for the high two strings, so I can fret chords on the low strings as I normally would and have all those drones on the top two strings.”

Continue reading Acoustic Guitar Interview

Interview in Requiem Vol. 6, Winter 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 music,” 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 1996

Paradigm Shift Interview

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.

Daily Freeman, Nov 29, 1996

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, 1996

Mean Street Vol. 8, #4 (1996)

Article by Ned Ragget

For Ryan Lum, instrumentalist for the L.A.based duo, Love Spirals Downwards, sticking t just one means of musical expression is not an option.

“I go between making this pure acoustic music and then going into this analog synthesizer, drum machine sound, tweaking knobs and stuff — just to keep things fun! If I did the same thing for a while, I’d get burnt out!”

Combined with the truly beautiful vocals of Suzanne Perry, Lum’s work in Love Spirals Downwards is a lush, wondrous experience. The band’s third album, Ever, has just been released on Projekt, and clearly demonstrates that Lum and Perry have moved from being simply fine disciples of the Cocteau Twins school of performance to becoming distinctly intriguing artists in their own right.

For Lum, the question of influence is a tricky one, reflecting the tension between inspiration and the need to be one’s own person.

“It’s hard to say which bands listen to are my influences and which are not. I guess everything I listen to somehow gets mixed up in what I do. That’s a tough question, because I don’t know what I’m trying to get away from, or what I’m trying to be like.”

On Ever, Lum found new ways of creating songs (reflected especially well in the new single “Sideways Forest,” in both its original and stripped-down, pulsing remix) which helped flesh out the album in different, intriguing ways, as opposed to the usual practice where he would give Perry a full song track to compose lyrics for and to sing over.

“Usually everything would be completed by that point, all the guitars and basic drum patterns. This album, I found that it was interesting to not have everything down, to just have the basic tracks for Suzanne to sing on, and then afterward I’d add different, new guitar parts that her vocals inspired me to do. It’s a little more interaction than me saying, ‘Here, here’s a song, sing on it and let me finish it.'”

For such a studio-based band –as Lum notes elsewhere, he was creating home tapes four years before Love Spirals Downwards released a record, while careful, full production marks all three releases so far—it might seem that live performances would be something hard to carry off.

Yet the band have played a number of shows over time, which Lum sees as a distinctively different way of looking at the duo’s work.

“For other bands, it might be natural to play live and try and record that later. For me, I record and then later I think, ‘Well, if we are going to play this live, how are we going to do it?’ There’s many different ways we could have gone about it, and the way I chose is essentially the two of us. We don’t have any backing tapes, sequencers or keyboards; we just have Suzanne singing and me playing acoustic guitar. Occasionally she’ll play a little tambourine.

I’ve learned, after playing a few shows, that live is about getting this kind of energy going or magic power happening! One thing that surprised me was that I didn’t know how possible that would be with just our stripped-down live sound. We thought we might need drums or all this other stuff. I’ve found that our acoustic sets are much better than they’d be with everything else!”

Though the band don’t play tours per se, having played at most three separate shows at any one jaunt, Love Spirals Downwards have played its share of one-off shows over time, with one of the most interesting, according to Lum, located in Mexico City — not least because it showed that the band’s fan base isn’t just a goth thing.

“The Mexico City show was typical of our kind of audience, with a mish-mash of different kinds of people. We tend to attract an extremely diverse crowd. There were goths there, but there were any other kind of fill-in-the-blank kind there as well? It was our biggest show, and that was weird! We’d never played to that many people before. Pertormance-wise, we were doing pretty bad that night! But they were energetic, and we fed off that; it made our evening go a little better!”

What’s next? With a few more one-off shows planned in the spring, Lum has already begun recording again, though there’s nothing specific on the horizon: “I don’t have this big scheme or plan; I may stop soon, or I may go for another ten years!”

Interview in Black Moon

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.

Continue reading Interview in Black Moon