Ryan and Anji discuss the creation of Lovespirals’ new CD, Free & Easy, detailing specific tracks, and comparing this 2005 release to their 2002 release, Windblown Kiss. Audio clips from every track on the album accompany this 15 minute interview feature.
Buy Lovespirals ‘Free & Easy’ on Bandcamp
Podcast Transcript:
Chillin’ with Lovespirals Free and Easy Feature October 16, 2005
[Ryan] Hello, this is Ryan Lum.
[Anji] And Anji Bee.
[Ryan] We’re from Lovespirals.
[Anji] And we’re just talking about our brand new 2005 release, ‘Free and Easy.’
[Ryan] All right.
[Anji] ‘Free and Easy’ is different in quite a few ways from ‘Windblown Kiss.’ Several of the songs were actually begun kind of simultaneous with some of the material on ‘Windblown Kiss.’ “Love Survives,” the single, we actually recorded that song even before ‘Windblown Kiss.’ The version you’ll hear on ‘Free and Easy’ is completely different from the early demo.
[Ryan] Yeah, I think just the drum loop remains and a bass line or two.
[Anji] The Rhodes. Simple Rhodes.
[Ryan] That’s really what made the song start, was the drum and the Rhodes.
[Anji] So what happened is, I was digging through one of his old DAT tapes after a computer crash, just kind of seeing what was on there, and I was like, you know, this idea that you started in ’98 is actually really cool. And he just had like maybe a minute and a half, and I really wanted to salvage that. So he went through whatever backups he had and found those two pieces and started recreating the song from scratch.
[Ryan] But yeah, it doesn’t sound anything like it. The chords are there, but what got put on top of it is different now.
[Anji] We even changed some of the chords after the original demo.
[Ryan] Yeah, we changed chords, melodies, harmonies, everything.
[Anji] Brand new vocals.
[Ryan] That’s what happened to a few songs. Yeah, that one for instance.
[Anji] And then “Hand in Hand” actually was like, there was a song called “Hand in Hand” in 1999, but it’s completely different from this. It was a drum and bass song that he made pretty much without really any input from me.
[Ryan] Just you had a vocal sample that said, “hand in hand, here we are, hand in hand.”
[Anji] Yeah, actually I’d sang more than that, but he just took those two pieces and then I was always like, “Gosh, I wanted to sing the rest of those lyrics.”
[Anji] So I just kept singing them until finally he broke down and made a song around those lyrics, more or less.
[Ryan] Yeah, the closing song, “Sand Castles,” was another one I remember when we were making that, it was one of the songs we were considering, actually, should it be on our previous record, ‘Windblown Kiss,’ or not.
[Anji] Yeah, it must have been one of the last songs we made back then.
[Ryan] Yeah, it was in there, and we concluded not to. I’m so glad we didn’t put it on there because the song is better and different now.
[Anji] Much better.
[Ryan] It basically has a whole new four-minute section, an ending section, that never existed before. It takes the song in a whole new awesome direction. It’s probably my favorite track on the album. Yeah, it is my favorite track.
[Anji] The drums, it’s got a totally different drum beat than when we were playing the song live during our ‘Windblown Kiss’ tour.
[Ryan] Yeah, so we did play it live on our tour.
[Anji] So it was different drums and actually we played it with sax the first time we ever played it live. That was twice, I think, we played it with sax.
[Ryan] So that song has a weird history, but I’m glad we let it brew.
[Anji] Me too.
[Ryan] That’s what’s cool about a lot of these songs, how they had an idea years back and then it just evolved over time and became what it was. And it’s way, way better now than it would have been if we had put it out three years ago.
[Anji] Yeah. But then there’s other songs like “Free and Easy” and “Habitual” that were just completely fresh. We came up with the concept and recorded it all in one set of months.
[Ryan] One chunk of time..
[Anji] I don’t know how long we spent on them, but…
[Ryan] Yeah. Typically maybe a month a song, which is actually a long time, considering we did the bulk of ‘Windblown Kiss’ in several months.
[Anji] Well, 9 songs, so…
[Ryan] So it really took a while.
[Anji] Yeah, that’s the biggest difference. That’s the biggest difference, I think, between these two albums is ‘Windblown Kiss’ we made sort of in a whirlwind of activity. Over a summer.
[Ryan] Yeah, it was kind of cool. I don’t think I ever made a record like that before.
[Anji] Well, this one is the opposite of that.
[Ryan] Total opposite.
[Anji] This is more like how you used to work.
[Ryan] Spending a month on a song and sometimes, as we’ve said, sometimes years before when we first started recording until we mixed it down and finished it. So a lot of times it had time to gel and evolve.
[Anji] Well, we learned so much about ourselves and about our crafts and about who we wanted to be together as a songwriting team, and I think it really shows. I feel like these songs are much stronger than the ‘Windblown Kiss’ songs.
[Ryan] There’s one way to, like, to… how you contrasted “He Calls Me” from ‘Windblown Kiss’ to the ‘Free and Easy’ songs. They’re less folky. They’re less guitar-y, I guess.
[Anji] Yeah.
[Ryan] Even though there’s still tons of guitar in ‘Free and Easy,’ maybe even more, but it’s just not quite as obvious, in-your-face as ‘Windblown Kiss.’ ‘Free and Easy’ is more of the right blend between organic elements like voice and guitars with electronic elements. While ‘Windblown Kiss’ leaned more towards the organic acoustic elements.
[Anji] Yeah. I know, which is so funny because the last full album we’d made before that was so far on the electronic side, ‘Flux.’ I remember you told me like, “Oh yeah, my next album is not going to be a drum and bass album.” And I was like, “It’s not?” Of course not! Your next album was like totally swinging the opposite way. And then now here it’s like swung into the middle point.
[Ryan] I tried to put more soul into the electronica this time. Not have it be all cold and, I don’t know, stark. I wanted it to be full of life and…
[Anji] I guess you could say ‘Flux’ was a little cold compared.
[Ryan] A little bit, yeah.
[Anji] Yeah, it is a little stark.
[Ryan] This has got a little more soul in it.
[Anji] I think my favorite song, I mean, you know, it tends to change, but I still kind of feel like my favorite song is “Habitual,” which was the last song we made. So that’s, I guess, how it goes.
[Ryan] Mmm hmm.
[Anji] The newest one, in my mind, is always the best because the last song you make seems to be a precursor of what the next thing is going to be, in many ways. Because really if you think about it, the last song we made on ‘Windblown Kiss’ was “He Calls Me,” which is totally a precursor to this album in many ways.
[Ryan] Huh.
[Anji] It’s the one song that was really Rhodes-driven.
[Ryan] Okay. I’ll buy it.
[Anji] It’s the only song [on ‘Windblown Kiss’] that’s Rhodes-driven.
[Ryan] Well, ‘Free and Easy’ is not as folky as that.
[Anji] No. Well, we could have taken that song further, but we just let it chill.
[Ryan] Yeah, we let it do its thing.
[Anji] Yeah.
[Ryan] So I guess, yeah, I agree. “Habitual” is sometimes my favorite song too. It goes between that and “Sandcastles.”
[Anji] I suppose you could say one of the really big differences between this album and prior work is that it’s the first album we’re doing it completely independently on our own label. So everything’s completely on our own terms from start to finish every step of the way.
[Ryan] And the whole time we’re making it too, we knew we weren’t under contract anymore to anyone. So it wasn’t like, say you were, you would have that somehow in your mind either on the forefront of your mind or at least in the background, like where it’s going, how it’s going to come out into the world. What kind of people, you know, popularize the labels that you’re on or whatever. But I didn’t have to think about any of that this time. So the music came from a just really intuitive, pure place, non-tainted place.
[Anji] All your previous music was “tainted.”
[Anji] No, but I know what you mean because when we first started making ‘Windblown Kiss,’ we were just totally making it just having fun, and then at a certain point, you know, when it became a product and when there was a deadline and it was going to a specific place, the vibe did change a little bit.
[Ryan] Yeah.
[Anji] It really did.
[Ryan] And ‘Free and Easy’ really had no deadline.
[Anji] No, which is part of the reason probably why it took so long, because we didn’t have a deadline. No one was sitting there, “YAH! YAH!,” [mimicking driving a horse train] you know? We could just keep perfecting it and perfecting it endlessly until we personally felt satisfied.
[Ryan] Yeah, I actually did feel that once before. I think a long time ago when I was making ‘Flux.’ I think before I made it, I didn’t know what I was going to make or where I was going to go exactly.
[Anji] That’s true. That’s right when your contract was renewed.
[Ryan] It’s like, I guess, the second time I’ve had that kind of purity and freedom to go wherever the muse was calling me.
[Anji] Hmmm. That’s kind of odd. Both times that you felt free, you made electronica albums. That’s weird. That’s really weird.
[Ryan] Yeah, if you wanna classify this as such, you can…
[Anji] There actually was a point when we were thinking about signing to another label, preparing demos and sending them out to electronica labels that I respected. And we were getting responses back and they were interested, but the thing is they were interested in hearing more of the same.
[Ryan] Like say one song, they wanted to hear more and more of that one song.
[Anji] Yeah, meaning a specific genre.
[Ryan] And if you hear ‘Free and Easy,’ it cuts across. Every song is a different genre and, you know, personally that’s not my thing. I’m not bagging on artists that do that. That’s cool. But I get bored if I kind of stick in the same realm for too long. So, I don’t know. I don’t think that would have been a good fit for us.
[Anji] Yeah, I think it was actually better that we didn’t pursue that. It was probably just time I wasted that we could have instead been getting this prepared to go on our own label, but it was just kind of scary at first, the idea of starting a whole company. Remember that?
[Ryan] Yeah, I remember doing that too. That was a year or two ago and things have totally, not totally, but they’ve changed a lot since then. I mean now…
[Anji] Digital distribution is much easier now.
[Ryan] Mhm.
[Anji] Before, I didn’t even know that there’d be an iTunes Store, for instance. I mean, that’s just really a fairly recent phenomenon.
[Ryan] Yeah, and all the places to sell online and such. I mean, it’s a totally different world now than it was just say even two, three years ago. So it’s great. I think it’s awesome that artists now can actually practically, and hopefully lucratively, just do it on their own and be free to do what they want and not have to answer to anyone other than themselves and their fans. It’s cool. It’s the way it should be.
[Anji] Yeah. Hence ‘Free and Easy.'(Giggles) A slight inspiration in some of the material on Free and Easy would definitely come from our collaborator, Doron.
[Ryan] Yeah, he’s in this cool deep house –I don’t know what you would call it– band, out of a New York house label, Subliminal. His band is Monkey Bars. I guess some of it rubbed off on us. I mean, I’ve been going to clubs like that for years.
[Anji] We’ve both been involved in the underground electronica scene for a long time.
[Ryan] Yeah.
[Anji] But hanging out with Doron, making ‘Windblown Kiss’ and then having him on tour and hearing his whole album coming to life. You know, it was kind of exciting. Like, “Wow, we want to do some music like that.”
[Ryan] Yeah, it rubs off. I mean, everything we’ve listened to over the past few years creeps in and, you know, there was a time when I was listening to a decent amount of deep house music. And it’s no coincidence that a couple songs on ‘Free and Easy’ go off in that direction too.
[Anji] Yeah. I remember actually Doron thought that his partner had played the Rhodes on “Trouble.”
[Ryan] The Rhodes.
[Anji] I was like, “No, not Gabe.”
[Ryan] I finally got an album cover in after all these years of using friends’ and others’ photos. It’s a shot I don’t remember taking, actually. I was going through a box of old photos. I think this is from an envelope of Hawaii shots. It appears to be the highway rolling through some hills or maybe a little town or something at sunset. It seemed to capture the mood of ‘Free and Easy’ very well.
[Anji] You can kind of see some palm trees off in the distance.
[Ryan] Yeah, on the road, on the highway at sunset. Everything’s great.
[Anji] It seemed to epitomize the whole ‘Free and Easy’ thing because the shot isn’t taken professionally. It’s not even straight. It’s taken crookedly. It’s just like, “Oh, just casually taking the picture out the window” or something.
[Ryan] And it’s had a few decades to decay. So it has an authentic, non-Photoshopped retro look to it.
[Anji] Yeah, so we had the picture and then the next question is, you know, how best to utilize it. And I decided, just as our music looked to 60s and 70s albums for inspiration, that I’d do the same for the artwork. So I was looking through old surf records and old jazz records for inspiration.
[Ryan] Which we collected quite a bit of.
[Anji] I kind of struck upon the idea of doing it like the old 60s records where —well, it’s a combination of the two really— where they name all the songs and they kind of tell you a little bit about the band itself right on the record, which I always thought was kind of fascinating. Like, I was trying to tie in the packaging to reflect some of what was on the inside of the record, as well.
[Ryan] So, I don’t know, it’s kind of a future-retro look, the whole thing, the front and the back.
[Anji] And then of course there’s the inside of the record, an homage to the 70s records that inspired Ryan, in particular.
[Ryan] So you have to get it to see what we’re talking about.
[Anji] Yeah.
[Anji] If anyone has Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours,’ you know what I’m talking about.
[Anji] Definitely.
[Ryan] Thanks for listening and you can find out more at lovespirals.com.