"Love Survives" Wins Track of the Week

For the 2nd time Lovespirals’ song, “Love Survives,” from Free & Easy, was chosen as ‘Electronica Track of the Week’ on Garageband. This song was also selected twice as the ‘Electronica Track of the Day,’ and has won a whole host of listener-based awards since we first uploaded it 2 years ago:

Track of the Day on 21Sep2004 in Electronic
Track of the Day on 19Nov2004 in Electronica
Track Of The Week on 1Nov2004 in Electronic
Track Of The Week on 23Jan2006 in Electronica
#14 Best Female Vocals in Electronica, all-time
#19 Best Melody in Electronica, all-time
Best Female Vocals in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Best Female Vocals in Electronic, week of 11Oct2004
Best Female Vocals in Electronic, week of 18Oct2004
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 27Dec2004
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 3Jan2005
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 16Jan2006
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 23Jan2006
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 30Jan2006
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 6Feb2006
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 13Feb2006
Best Female Vocals in Electronica, week of 20Feb2006
Best Drums in Electronic, week of 18Oct2004
Best Bass in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Best Bass in Electronic, week of 11Oct2004
Best Keyboards in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Best Keyboards in Electronica, week of 3Jan2005
Best Keyboards in Electronica, week of 23Jan2006
Best Production in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Best Production in Electronic, week of 20Sep2004
Best Production in Electronica, week of 23Jan2006
Best Lyrics in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Best Lyrics in Electronic, week of 20Sep2004
Best Lyrics in Electronic, week of 11Oct2004
Best Lyrics in Electronic, week of 18Oct2004
Best Lyrics in Electronica, week of 13Feb2006
Best Melody in Electronic, week of 20Sep2004
Best Melody in Electronica, week of 23Jan2006
Best Melody in Electronica, week of 6Feb2006
Best Melody in Electronica, week of 20Feb2006
Best Beat in Electronica, week of 20Feb2006
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 27Dec2004
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 23Jan2006
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 30Jan2006
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 6Feb2006
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 13Feb2006
Best Mood in Electronica, week of 20Feb2006
Most Original in Electronica, week of 20Feb2006
Feel Good Track in Electronic, week of 6Sep2004
Feel Good Track in Electronic, week of 25Oct2004
Best Love Song in Electronic, week of 27Sep2004
Chill-Out Track overall, week of 13Sep2004
Chill-Out Track in Electronic, week of 13Sep2004
Chill-Out Track in Electronic, week of 20Sep2004
Chill-Out Track in Electronic, week of 11Oct2004
Chill-Out Track in Electronica, week of 20Dec2004
Best Elevator Song in Electronic, week of 18Oct2004

“Love Survives” is currently rated at 4.7 stars out of 5. The highest it reached on the Electronic charts was #6 of 289 songs on December 28, 2004.  Check out “Love Survives” on Garageband for yourself!

New song #2

We’re really on a roll this year. Finished up another new song last night that we’re both really into. We exercised great control and kept it down to just over 3 minutes. You know us, we’ve been tending to stretch out every song with long meandering outros and solo sections… Most every song on Free and Easy is over 5 minutes. But this latest one is compact, even a bit spare by our standards. No drums or bass, a minimum of electric guitar, and no full keyboard part – just a few notes at the end. Maybe we’ll put a snatch of it on the next podcast? Oh, I should mention it’s called “Empty Universe”…

Lovespirals Interview on Sonic Spotlight

Lovespirals were interviewed by War-n Harrison, of Hungry Lucy, on his brand new podcast, Sonic Spotlight. Ryan and Anji discuss inspirations, the writing process, their feelings about live performance vs recording, and more in this 25 minute podcast.

Read a news announcement about The Sonic Spotlight debut on AlfaMatrix

Chillin with Lovespirals Episode 12

The new podcast went up late last night. I tried uploading it 3 times, but kept getting some dumb error page, until I finally realized that this is the first time I’ve tried to upload it using Firefox instead of Safari. Once I did it from Safari, everything was cool. Now why would that be? Argh… computers! Can’t live with them, can’t live without ’em.

Anyway, this was one of the easier podcasts to produce. For once, we recorded straight through with no breaks, no redos, and no punch ins. Unfortunately, my volume spiked into distortion 4 or 5 times. I’m always worried about someone listening with earbuds and getting their hearing damaged from my piercing laughs, so I was all anal and dipped the volume down on those or tried to edit them out. Made the process take longer. Oh well. Next time I need to try using compression while I record, rather than just in the post-processing.

This episode is really cool because we share about a minute of a brand new, unreleased song, that we’re just finishing up right now. I guess that makes is a “don’t miss” episode.

Chillcuts website

Finally had a chance to work a bit on updating the Chillcuts site (www.chillcuts.com). Now the site matches the style of the record label logo, which our current site is also modeled after. The content has been updated to reflect the imminent launch of my new podcast, tentatively titled the “Chillcuts Chillcast.” I even put up a link to my rough draft of the first episode. I haven’t yet worked out where I’ll be hosting the podcast, so this is just a sneak peek, as it were… Also updated the store so that you can see more about the CDs listed for sale. Looks more interesting, too. So this site is an improvement on the last one, but it isn’t totally complete yet. Oh yeah, I also made a banner ad for the site/podcast and put it up on our MySpace page.

Pop Stops for The Star reviews Free & Easy

John Evanstan reviews Free & Easy

The Southern California duo of Ryan Lum and Anji Bee bring to mind the cool, sensual jazz of Sade on their nine-track independent CD Free and Easy. They named their record label “Chillcuts” and that’s a perfect definition of their downbeat, sultry late-night sound.

Lum plays a sedate electric guitar and gently jazzy Rhodes piano to back up Bee as she croons and seduces at the microphone. It’s a deliciously soothing combination.

Lovespirals began as an outgrowth of Lum’s former band incarnation, Love Spirals Downwards, which sold more than 50,000 copies of four albums on Projekt Records in the mid-’90s. In 1999, Lum began working with a new lead vocalist in Bee, and changed the band name to Lovespirals to reflect the new sound and direction. The result is a duo that knows how to craft seductive vocal loungey jazz with cooly shifting electronic rhythms.

Back on iTunes

Forgot to mention that Chillin’ with Lovespirals went back onto iTunes a-ok the other day. Guess Apple figured out their problem. Cool. Speaking of Apple, Ryan’s all excited about Steve Job’s keynote today. I asked him not to tell me all the news so that I can be surprised when I watch the video. If they’re putting one up, which I assume they are. Those live events were always a pain in the butt, so I can understand why they didn’t do it this time, but it’s kind of a bummer, all the same.

So I put together my first Chillcast this weekend, but I haven’t actually launched the podcast yet. I realized that I have to do some unfun stuff, like create a proper site for it, get my RSS feed together and all that. Ryan did all the hard stuff for our band podcast, but this one is my baby. I can’t decide if I should call it Chillcuts Chillcast so it’ll make more sense to host it on www.chillcuts.com, or maybe Chillcuts with Anji Bee and host it on www.anjibee.com? But I don’t want to go buy www.chillcast.com, really… Blah, this is the part of creation that I don’t find fun. Anyway, stayed tuned for future developments with my new music podcast!

iTunes Search Issue

C.C. Chapman emailed me today to say that his show, Accident Hash, also was not showing up in iTunes searches. He claims iTunes is “hosed” right now. Hopefully they’ll have it fixed soon. It’s cool to know that C.C. was listening to our podcast. I guess he mentioned us on his last night, I’m just checking it out right now. Gee… I think my flirtation with Adam has somehow switched to a flirtation with C.C. (Do you put another period after C.C. to end the sentence, I wonder?) That’s right, I was going to cut in some of C.C.’s comments about me into the last Chillin’, but I forgot. Oh well, just go check out his shows from last month and you’ll hear a few things.