Live at 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
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 Perry’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 song, and left fashionably disappointed when LSD ran out of songs to play.”
— H. Aaron Ripes, UnderScope Magazine
Live at The Vic Theater for ProjektFest Chicago June 25, 1996
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, the festival lured fans from all over the globe. Many hardcore goths were so anxious to get 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. Love Spirals Downwards embraced a bare-bones presentation, eschewing visual effects, gothic-styled clothing, and all instrumentation but acoustic guitar. The audience was enraptured by Suzanne Perry’s airy angelic voice, serene as a soft breeze… Though Love Spirals Downwards’ Ryan Lum reported that his un-gothic orange psychedelic shirt got mocked by vampires, and despite [Pat] 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. Love Spirals Downwards’ Suzanne Perry said, “I felt like it was a 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.– Dan Dinello, Alternative Press
In the chaos of the evening, I was snatched out of the crowd by Lucian of Black Tape for a Blue Girl… We talked for a while, exchanged personal updates, and watched Love Spirals Downwards, the final band of the evening. Suzanne Perry sings in such a way that if you close your eyes, you forget everything; where you are, what you’re doing, what planet you’re on, etc… her voice was dazzling and their sound seemed surprisingly warm and huge, despite the absence of synthesizers. Ryan Lum strummed and picked away as Suzanne cascaded through song after song until the evening was over. — Jon DeRosa, Morbid Outlook
The natives were getting restless by the time Love Spirals Downwards started their set; the duo of Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry is basically atmospheric acoustic guitar and voice, the kind of stuff that forces you to concentrate or it becomes background noise. Which it apparently did for a pretty large segment of the audience. Those down in front were there to listen – standing stock still, for the most part; there was never anything even remotely resembling a mosh pit – and those in the back were there to socialize. I had to move. And then it was over, so I had to leave. — Karen Woods, Huh?