Category Archives: Review

All Music Guide Reviews Flux

The All Music Guide has posted a review of Flux. Not sure why Tom Schulte only credited Suzanne by name and neglected to mention the album’s composer, but here it is:

Picking up on the ear-catching, edgy segmented rhythms of the breakbeat wave on Flux , Love Spirals Downward[s] updates their sound, leaving the creative core intact. It’s all about texture in this multi-layered album of Suzanne Perry’s atmospheric vocals, brightly strummed acoustic guitar, and urgent electro-beats. While Perry’s long phrasing meets the moderate rhythms to imply a midpoint, ocean coast sonic waves ebb and flow over the listener intoxicatingly. Indeed, “Sound of Waves” is the name of one of these undulating tracks. Swirling and merging, this duo’s techno-psychedelic (psychedelia implied by the gentle nod of the content without considering their titular acronym) ballads of love lost or failed (“Psyche,” “By Your Side,” and “I’ll Always Love You”) are constructed in a way that owes as much to the accessibility of pop as it does to current forms of electronica.  — Tom Schulte

For the record, “Psyche” (and “Ring”) feature Kristen Perry’s vocals/lyrics. Note also that “Sunset Bell” features Jennifer Ryan Fuller’s vocals. And you might want to know that Ryan Lum composed, performed, and produced every song on the album.

Pitchfork Reviews Flux

Projekt sent us a review of Flux by Skaht Hansen of Pitchfork Media:

Rating: 9.3 

For years, Love Spirals Downwards have been the mascot leaders of Chicago- based Projekt records.  Epitomizing the label with their lush, casually paced guitars and siren vocals, Love Spirals Downwards have created their own little niche in the ambient gothic world. 

The latest album from the band, Flux , is more of the same stuff we’ve come to expect from the California-based duo with one key exception — over all of the hypnotic aural dreamscapes that have made up Love Spirals Downwards is the introduction of jungle beats.  Very weird, and something that makes you instinctively pop the disc out and make sure you put the right album in.  But it’s true. 

The combination of gothic trance and jungle rhythms isn’t something that you’d probably expect to be found on the Projekt label, or any other gothic or dark ambient label that’s trying to take itself seriously. However, within minutes of listening to this disc, you’ll think that Love Spirals Downwards has been doing it for years and everybody else is just way behind the times. 

Much less like a prelude to a dance remix, and more like an integral part of the music, electronic drums are used here in a tempo that’s plenty fast, but subdued enough to not be the foreground of the songs.  Rather, the foreground remains the interaction between effect-heavy guitar and other-worldly vocals.  Songs stand out as clearly futuristic, perhaps paving the way for a new interaction of genres that hadn’t previously been conceived. 

Slacking back and listening to “Sound of Waves” or “Ring” easily lets you believe you’ve been somehow privy to a CD warped back in time from ten years in the future.  We’ll be anxiously awaiting the next album. 

-Skaht Hansen

Ephemera Reviews ProjektFest ‘97

A huge feature on the Chicago ProjektFest is featured in Epherma, packed with photos from this multi-day event.

Love Spirals Downward usually plays a mellower type of acoustic rock, most easily compared to the Cranes or bands of a like nature. Tonight they would debut a new style that sees more of an electronic feel. Suzanne admitted to a bout of nervousness, that preceded this appearance, and related a story about an X-files monster (the Chupacabra??) and how it’s name could be said to the beat of one of their songs. It was really quite refreshing to see a band get off their high horse and actually be friendly and personable to the audience. You felt like they were performing for you in their living room. It was nice and intimate. Except for a few NOISY people who talked all through the set it was good. The electronic songs brought up comparisons of Portishead or Lamb and still sounded a bit rough around the edges, but eventually those gave way to the acoustic guitar style that most are used to hearing form these two. What can you say, it’s sheer beauty to hear Suzanne’s voice pierce the still air. There is nothing more honest and breathtaking. They wrapped up with another electronic bit. All in all I could say that it was a very surreal performance. You would have these very beautiful songs juxtaposed with anecdotes and silly songs about a “pickleman.” It wasn’t as jarring as, say, Rasputina’s commentary but it was equally bizarre. I liked it a lot. No one should miss the opportunity to see these guys. No one.

Alternative Press Reviews ProjektFest Chicago

“Making Darkwaves Over Chicago”

by Dan Dinello

PROJEKT’S TWO-NIGHT SHOWCASE A SUCCESS.

The gothic underground emerged in Chicago for the two-day Projekt festival, a celebration of the label’s “ethereal, gothic, dark ambient” music. Featuring nine acts that rarely perform live — including the debut of Projekt creator/owner Sam Rosenthal’s own group, Black Tape for a Blue Girl — the festival lured fans from all over the globe.

Many hardcore goths were so anxious to gt inside that each night several hundred vampires, angels, witches, martyrs, undertakers, velvetized medievalists, and pierced, rubberized fetishists lined up outside the ornate Vic Theatre and risked massive makeup meltdown under the hot June sun. Once inside, they were immediately entranced by the festival’s most evocative music as  tribal-ambient musician Steve Roach opened the show on both nights. Surrounded by stacks of keyboards & assorted percussion, enmeshed in organic electronic cables, Roach appeared to be wired into his instruments. He played nonstop, hour-long sets of turbulent environmental noise, primal rhythms, and cascading drones dominated by thunderous blasts of a didgeridoo.

In 1983, Rosenthal created Projekt in his hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a vehicle for his own music. For ten years he operated in Los Angeles, adding groups who reflected his dark personal aesthetic. Now living in Chicago, Rosenthal used the festival to call attention to his cult label. “To prove you’re real, you have to play live,” he says. Mysterious atmospherics and turbulent moods characterize the Projekt sound/image: Projekt fills the dark ethereal void created when British avant-pop label 4AD — original home of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil — abandoned the doom-laden style and its gothic fans.

“It’s a compliment to be compared to 4AD,” says Rosenthal. “They put out some great stuff.”

Lycia played withing a thick graveyard fog that often obliterated guitarist/vocalist Mike VanPortfleet & Vocalist Tara VanFlower. Their dark, shimmering space-out music was initially mesmerizing but lacked variation. Love Spirals Downwards and Soul Whirling Somewhere embraced a bare-bones presentation, eschewing visual effects, gothic-styled clothing, and all instrumentation but acoustic guitar. LSD fared best: The audience was enraptured by Suzanne Perry’s airy angelic voice, serene as a soft breze. SWS’s gothic folk-singer Michael Plaster missed the layered electronic textures of his albums. His fragile, mournful voice seemed lost in the cosmos.

Eden, marked by Sean Bowley’s morbidly intense vocals, started slowly but reached apocalyptic power by the end of their set. Arcanta evoked a mystical/religious atmosphere through sacred chanting, haunting percussion, & majestic melodies. Attrition’s driving industrial-lite dance rhythms and Thanatos’ standard rock instrumentation provided variation. Thanatos’ William Tucker tore off angry, scorching guitar leads next to sneering vocalist Padraic Ogl. Their set was somewhat clouded by distractingly inappropriate militaristic/Nazi imagery and cheesy video effects projected behind the band.

Clearly the highlight of the festival were Black Tape for a Blue Girl. Oscar Herrera and Lucian Casselman sang melodramatic vocals amid heavy smoke and blue/magenta light. Each song seamlessly flowed into the next w/ambient transitions provided by Mera Roberts’ sorrowful cello & Rosenthal’s swirling electronics. After moving from aching romance to passionate bliss to tortured betrayal, Black Tape ended the festival on a quiet note.

Though Love Spirals Downwards’ Ryan Lum reported that his un-gothic orange psychedelic shirt got mocked by vampires, and despite Ogl spitting up wine on the Electric Hellfire Club’s Thomas Thorn, there was a community feeling in the air. Band members hung out in the audience to hear the other bands and talk to fans. Performers and audience were unified through the music. LSD’s Suzanne Perry said, “I felt like it was gathering of old friends from all across the country.”

Enough tickets were sold for Rosenthal to declare the festival a success and entertain the idea of putting on another one next year.

Muse Magazine Reviews Troubadour Show

The Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA September 21, 1995:

The L.A. based duo, Love Spirals Downwards, create soundscapes layered with soothingly airy keyboards, acoustic guitar arpeggios, and ethereal female vocals. In a rare appearance at the Troubadour, Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry stripped their music to its essentials: an amplified Ovation acoustic guitar, a haunting voice, and one beautiful melody after another. The rapt Troubadour audience responded enthusiastically to the pair, who present their music with the seriousness it deserves, but who entertain with humorously casual banter and interplay with the crowd between songs. 

— John Koenig, Muse Magazine

Underscope Reviews Troubadour Show

The Troubadour, West Lost Angeles, September 21, 1995 

“One of the darlings of the innovating Projekt label, Love Spirals Downwards consists  of only 2 members. Given the swirling, multi-tracked ambience of their records, one  might expect their live show to have difficulty living up to such studio magic, even  with a requisite backing tape. But LSD took to the stage with only one instrument:  Ryan Lum’s six-stringed acoustic guitar. As they began, Suzanne’s angelic voice  floated out over the hushed audience. Trust me, no backing tape was needed. Stripped  down to this bare essence of chiming guitar and dazzling voice, LSD’s songs burned  with a raw, ethereal brilliance. Anyone who narrow-mindedly accuses them of being  simply studio musicians needs to be taken out back and whupped good. The set’s highlights included the lovely “Will You Fade” and “Write in Water,” taken from their latest  record Ardor. The audience showered them with wild acclaim after each songs, and  left fashionably disappointed when LSD ran out of songs to play.” 

— H. Aaron Ripes, UnderScope Magazine 

Altered Mind 13, May 1993: Idylls Review

Ariel wrote a a very kind review of ‘Idylls’ for the latest issue of Altered Mind. It reads:

With their two debut tracks on Projekt comp From Across This Gray Land #3, Love Spirals Downwards promoted a beautiful first album. They didn’t warn s that it would approach the sublime. The perfect pairing of Suzanne Perry’s ethereal siren vocal and Ryan Lu’s intricately crafted instrumentation is the ideal vehicle for LSD’s dreamlike music. The sound is soothing, uplifting, and energizing all at once, and is marked by both delicacy and force. The 13 songs, instead of merging into a trail of similar and overused patterns, are diverse. All this from a debut CD. I can’t wait to hear their next effort.

Be sure to check out the Love Spirals Downwards interview in Altered Mind #12.

The Altered Mind #12, Sept. 1992 Interview & Review

At our usual cozy interview spot, we spoke with new Projekt band Love Spirals Downwards’ only two members, Ryan and Suzanne. IT was the first interview ever from a band which has played just one live show. Uncertain as to their place in the scene but with a sound that leads the way, Love Spirals Downwards is a band to watch. Interview by Ariel and Aillinn.

Ryan: Is the whole interview like question and answer, or is it going to be more of an article?

AM: No, question and answer… Having heard only the two songs, “Mediterranea” and “Forgo” on [Projekt compilation] From Across This Gray Land No. 3, what can we expect from your album, which is due out in November?

Ryan: We’re mixing it right now. We just mixed the first three of the eleven or twelve songs. It will have a different feel than “Mediterranea” and “Forgo.” It’s more… what do you think? Trancey, Eastern.

Suzanne: We were a little reluctant to put those two songs on, when he [Projekt’s Sam Rosenthal] chose those two. Those are two of the three first songs that we ever sent him. They’re a little old. They’re about a year old. I guess the sound’s a little bit different [on the album]. It is a little more trancy, more Indian or Middle Eastern sounding.

Continue reading The Altered Mind #12, Sept. 1992 Interview & Review