Went to the Apple store yesterday. Boy, is that place dangerous! So much cool stuff. I always want to get one of each… They were still out of the new iPod shuffles. Turns out they have a waiting list! Sheesh. Anyway, I picked up the new iLife suite. Hopefully I will have a better time of upgrading it this time around. I’m excited about the new iPhoto books and the fact that I can now import my digital...

January 29, 2005, Stratosphere Fanzine, Jen “Sidewaysgaze” JEN: Do you consider Lovespirals to be a continuation of Love Spirals Downwards or is it a totally separate creation? RYAN: It’s a new band for sure. But on the other hand, I’m just doing my thing: making music. I never sat down and decided to make music in a way that wasn’t natural for me. I’m just doing what I’ve...

Ryan and Anji were recently interviewed by Jen of Stratosphere Fanzine. You can read highlights here in the “interviews” section, or view the full interview at Stratosphere Fanzine’s Yahoo! Launch Group.

Just thought I’d mention that I’m going live on Chillcuts Radio this Sunday to premier a brand new feature with one of my favorite bands, Sunburn in Cyprus. I will be talking with band founder, Ulli Conrad, as I preview their new album. The feature will run twice, the first time at 4pm PST and then again at 6pm, with me deejaying a chilled selection of independent and indie label electronica bands...

Just found out about a place that sells FLAC (and OGG) files online. I was just talking about that concept, too. The only catch is, it costs artists $50 a year to use their service plus they take a cut of each sale. Whole albums sell for just $8.99, which is a bit cheap considering they take almost half of that. So I don’t know if that’s what we’d want to do. Probably better to set up our own...

It seems like we always come back to the question of genre with our music. It’s unfortunate that promotions rely on super specific categories, but that’s just the way it is. The music world is like a giant data base in that way. Folks want to be able to put each band and release into a box so that they can stack it up with other boxes into neat little tables (data base “tables,” not dining...

Now is the official launch of the band’s Cafe Press Store which is just filled to the brim with cool merchandise for both Lovespirals and Love Spirals Downwards, including t-shirts, stickers, and buttons. Everything is priced very, very low for your shopping enjoyment, so get it while it’s hot at cafepress.com/lovespirals!

Finally the storm has broken here in Southern California, to be replaced by a wonderfully warm Santa Ana wind. Mmm… Actually went to the beach yesterday and laid out, enjoying my new iPod. I hope this weather lasts long enough for us to sneak in a band photo shoot. It’s about time we got some current portraits taken. I’m also starting to seriously think about album art for the new CD cover....

Ryan and I have come to the realization that 128kbps mp3s are way too old school. Like, so 1998! I’ve been re-encoding my digital music library into 320kbps AAC files, which sound much better — much better even that 320kbps mp3 files. For special albums, I’m using Apple Lossless, which sounds basically like an AIFF or WAV file (which is what CDs are generally made from), but is only about...

If you happen to be into groovy jazzy pop songs like I am, especially those with an early 1970′s vibe with lots of sweet rhodes keyboards, I’ve recently found an unlikely winner. It’s from the band Chicago and it’s their Chicago 7 album. It’s nothing like the rock pop ballad stuff that they became known for later in their career. On this album their jazz and rock backgrounds blend...