The Chillin’ with Lovespirals band podcast makes it’s return! We have so much news to share this episode, including our new album charting pretty heavily, which is super fun. We get into some background on our song, “Are You Lonely,” Ryan gets into the inspiration for the overall sound of ‘Life Goes On,’ Anji digs up some unreleased video, plus more news and conversation. We really hope you dig hearing/watching us talk about music because we have lots more stories to share about the making of the album and what inspires us to create! Check out http://somafm.com for our music and other great indie bands
FOLLOW US ON MIXCLOUD: For more audio podcasts, interviews, DJ mixes etc at https://www.mixcloud.com/lovespirals
BUY OR STREAM OUR MUSIC:
Our new Lovespirals album, ‘Life Goes On,’ is OUT NOW!!! Limited Edition CD with button via https://lovespirals.bandcamp.com Or iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google Play, Tidal, Pandora, or YouTube
Ryan’s 2000 Love Spirals Downwards comp, ‘Temporal,’ is back!!! Limited copies of the original CD plus digital download with bonus tracks via https://lovespiralsdownwards.bandcamp.com
Now you can check out this episode in audio format via any of the major podcast apps, or just listen in the Spreaker app below:
TRANSCRIPT:
Chillin’ with Lovespirals episode 86, April 8, 2019
Anji: Hey, I’m Anji.
Ryan: And I’m Ryan.
Anji: And we are Lovespirals.
Ryan: Lovespirals.
Anji: So welcome to episode 86.
Ryan: Going back many years to when we had our audio podcast on iTunes and everything.
Anji: Well, okay, so before we get into the show, I just want to address that this is the second of our newly relaunched video podcast on YouTube at youtube.com/lovespiralsofficial. But it’s number 86 because it’s also an audio podcast over at mixcloud.com/lovespirals. I just uploaded the very first episode we ever did, like in 2005, in the interim between our December podcast and today.
Ryan: Oh my god.
Anji: So sorry that we’ve been lagging, but there’s been a lot going on.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: I don’t know which is the most exciting thing.
Ryan: Let’s start anywhere you want.
Anji: Well, okay, I’m kind of excited because Pandora actually listed ‘Life Goes On’ in their library this time.
Ryan: Wow, and that’s big news because we were like anti-Pandora for a while because they were really cool with our first few albums as Lovespirals, but then on our our prior album, ‘Future Past’, they wouldn’t accept it. And their grounds were, “Oh, we already have a bunch of albums that sound like that.” Like, really? A bunch of bands that have crossed like 2000s like downtempo chill out with Pink Floyd and little Cocteau Twins?
Anji: Yeah.
Ryan: Like, I would like to hear that. Please suggest that to me.
Anji: The market is saturated apparently. Back when they used to beg independent bands to send their music, people like us. That’s when they were cool to us.
Ryan: That’s before they got venture capital funding and all that.
Anji: Yeah. And then once they started like working with big bands, all of a sudden we were cut. But we’re back.
Ryan: Cool.
Anji: Yeah. So we’re back. I actually went over to Pandora and I was like, “Oh, wow, I’m going to get like really involved.” I like started trying to make like playlists and like they have this new thing now where artists can make little audio blurbs. So I recorded a couple like, “Hey, this is Anji of Lovespirals. You’re listening to a track from our new album.”
Ryan: Cool. Nice.
Anji: But now they’re rolling out something that’s even more extensive. I haven’t gotten into it yet.
Ryan: We could be bothered to try it out probably.
Anji: Yeah, now that we’re bros with Pandora again.
Ryan: That’s how we are. We just like, you know, just try out new stuff online to like, you know, promote our music, promote our media.
Anji: Yeah, and talk to our fans.
Ryan: And talk, yeah, exactly.
Anji: Yeah, we’re way into it.
Ryan: Yeah, we do live streams. I don’t know if we could do a Lovespirals live stream chat, you know?
Anji: Wow. I wonder if anyone would tune in.
Ryan: Let us know in the comments if you would watch and you know, participate in a Love Spirals live chat.
Anji: That would be fun.
Ryan: Yeah, it’d be fun. Just talk about music instead of like food stuff.
Anji: So, so Pandora, babe, I wanted to tell you something! I was looking originally on our song, “Are You Lonely,” to see what songs that they said it sounded like. But then it turns out this is what they said our entire album, ‘Life Goes On’, sounds like.
Ryan: Yeah, I said, “Really? Like, ‘Are You Lonely’ sounds like these bands?” I looked at, like, try like our ambient song, no lyrics. It’s the same bands, same songs. I go, “Okay, this isn’t album wide, but just band wide.” They think we sound like these bands. So let’s check this out. It’s just kind of weird.
Anji: I know. It is kind of funny. It gives us a lot of talking points. So they think that we have similarities with Zero 7 – “In the Waiting Line.”
Ryan: Great band, great song, but definitely not an inspiration for this album, ‘Life Goes On’. Not even close.
Anji: No. I think it was true of the last album, which they “had too much of.”
Ryan: Yeah. Maybe they were right. They had too much of Zero 7. What else?
Anji: Yeah. Air, “La Femme d’Argent.”
Ryan: One of my favorite songs from the 90s, hands down.
Anji: Yeah.
Ryan: Air, “La Femme d’Argent,” a classic song. Love it, beautiful basslines, drum machines and all, synthesizer string machines, but doesn’t sound like ‘Life Goes On’ at all.
Anji: Once again, the album that they don’t have on their service sounds more like “La Femme d’Argent.”
Ryan: Uh huh.
Anji: Yeah, you know what? That album, that Air album, God, what’s the name of it?
Ryan: Um, ‘Moon Safari.’
Anji: ‘Moon Safari’. That makes me think of when we first started dating. That was, like, the big album.
Ryan: Hip and with it.
Anji: We listened to it a lot. We did ecstasy and listened to it.
Ryan: Uh oh!
Anji: Yeah, I know. We were hella 90s.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: Let’s see. Oh, yeah, this one. Okay, I love this song, Aya, “Nobody Knows Me.”
Ryan: Yeah, most people don’t know that. They’re Aya, she works a lot with one of our favorite bands of all time.
Anji: Yeah, Blue Six.
Ryan: Yeah. It’s a great song, great band, but I don’t think it sounds anything like this.
Anji: No. Uh-uh.
Ryan: Should we just talk about our inspirations?
Anji: It’s got this like tropical thing.
Ryan: Yeah, I mean it’s cool. I love her. I love all the stuff that she’s done with Jay and Dave Boonshoft, but doesn’t sound like us. I mean, this album, I know where my inspirations came from for sure. And I think, you know, those of you that are, you know, up on that kind of music that I’m into know exactly where it’s coming from. And it’s not from coming from like 2000s downtempo. It’s coming from–
Anji: No, it goes way earlier than that.
Ryan: It goes back to my prior band, Love Spirals Downwards, the band I did before I met Anji, on a label called Projekt, you know, was ethereal kind of a label. I guess it would cross over some goth and stuff, but yeah, I was all into Cocteau Twins. I was trying to like, yeah, Slowdive, stuff like that. Just, you know, just beautiful shoegazer type stuff. And that’s what I that’s the well I was drinking from entirely from in making ‘Life Goes On’.
Anji: Yeah.
Ryan: I just wanted to make an album let me just give a quick inspiration. Like, you know, I always wondered if I had good equipment back in the 90s — which I didn’t. It was pretty primitive, but it got the job done. If I had good equipment and had no excuses other than like lack of talent or inspiration, would I be able to make an album that sounded as gorgeous as theirs? So I just said, “I got the stuff. Now I have great gear now.” And that was my goal and inspiration, just to make the album I wish I could have made back then. But not trying to be retro, using the influences and things I’ve learned since then as far as like, you know, sound production, bands I listen to now. I’m like way more on top of stuff like say Pink Floyd sound, which I didn’t know too much about back in the 90s.
Anji: I feel like that one’s my fault. I got you really into Pink Floyd.
Ryan: Oh, thank you. I was I was always Pink Floyd curious and interested, but I didn’t really go down the rabbit holes of, you know, like, you know, so many of their albums that we’re into.
Anji: Yeah. Yeah, I totally grew up with Floyd. Like, I remember when ‘The Wall’ dropped and going to the store to get the vinyl and everything.
Ryan: ‘Wish You Were Here’, one of my favorite albums of all time.
Anji: Yeah. So, but it’s not like you weren’t like listening to like Cocteau Twins’ albums and like going like trying to work on songs like based on listening to something.
Ryan: No.
Anji: It’s more like you had absorbed it over all these decades.
Ryan: You’re absolutely right. Yeah, I wasn’t like listening actively, “I’m going to steal this and that.” I know the sound because I’ve heard their albums a million times. So I know it’s just like part of my DNA. So I was just accessing that part of my DNA that’s them, and just trying to express that musically.
Anji: Yeah. First of all, you guys should know that this guy plays all the instruments and he’s always played all the instruments.
Ryan: Yeah, occasional guest musician.
Anji: So to say band isn’t really isn’t really appropriate. Like, you’re a you’re a musical composer and you do all the programming and if there’s any kind of instrument or drum machine or anything, it’s all you.
Ryan: Prince. I’m like Prince.
Anji: You are like Prince. Except for Prince also writes the lyrics and comes up with the—
Ryan: Yeah. I don’t do the singing and all that part, but all the music and writing bit, yeah, it’s just like Prince does. You hear a groovy freaking bass line or drum beat, that’s Prince.
Anji: Yeah, this guy has never had a band. Like, you’ve never had a bassist, a drummer, like nothing.
Ryan: Yeah. That kind of classic band. Not that I dislike that. I just never put one together or kept one together basically.
Anji: I think that you have too much like control issues to be working with a full band, honestly.
Ryan: No. I mean, I appreciate working with a good musician. If I like jam with someone cool, you know, that’s like rad, you know. I a lot of guys I watch and go, “God, I wish I can get a musician like that,” you know?
Anji: Really?
Ryan: Like say like John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin. God, I would give anything to have a guy that could play a funky bass line like that, play beautiful Rhodes like that, you know?
Anji: That would be nice.
Ryan: Um, Mick Fleetwood. God, if I had a guy that played drums like that, I’d never use a drum machine again.
Anji: Wow. Well, we’ll see, you know?
Ryan: So if you guys are watching, if you’re watching, let me know in the comments if you love to collaborate. If you somehow strangely remotely happen to be fans of my or our work, let us know down here.
Anji: Yeah. But anyways, okay, so first of all, there’s no band. It’s Ryan Lum. So it’s Ryan Lum like making up stuff here in this very studio at this time.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: But back in the day, like right when I met you was when you were starting to record things like directly into a computer. Yeah. But before that, you were recording to tape.
Ryan: A tape machine. Yeah, a quarter inch eight track tape machine. And the mixers and preamps I was using back then kind of sucked, too. The tape was not high quality like say two inch 16 track or two inch 24 track.
Anji: Oh man, you’ve got some tape down here. You could show them a reel.
Ryan: Yeah, let’s show them a reel of my crappy tape, huh?
Anji: So you only had eight tracks available to you, which honestly, like I had a band back then and I had like a four track tape recorder at home and I would have to go into a studio to do something of this quality.
Ryan: I’m not even sure which album this is from. But this is from an old album.
Anji: Wow. Dude, this is history right here.
Ryan: Yeah, look at this stuff, man.
Anji: Oh, yeah, it says on the back.
Ryan: Yeah, I don’t know what those are.
Anji: Vocal five. What?
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: He still has the machine, but it’s just like it hasn’t been used in like a decade. Who knows if it even works. But I’ve begged him to get it out to see if it works and see what’s still on tape. But and then you had to sync a drum machine up like with SMPTE time or something. Like, how did it work?
Ryan: It’s complicated. You lay down a track of time code. So you lose one of your eight tracks to time code. It’s complicated.
Anji: Oh, cool.
Ryan: Synchronize a drum machine or sequencer and run those through a mixing board as that plays along synchronized to the stuff on tape. You don’t have to do that anymore. Just now just use everything all in the computer.
Anji: It’s all over here in our computer now. Yeah. So luckily I came on board when it was like a much easier time to do home recording. But yeah, a lot has changed even in just the 20 years that we’ve been working on music together.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, computers have gotten way more powerful, which was the inspiration to really make this album. You know, I got in 2011 –I still have it– this it was the most powerful iMac of the time. Four core i7, which multi threads into eight cores, super powerful. In fact, the iMac we got you in 2015, finally it was like a base level one, but finally it had the same power as my 2011.
Anji: Wow!
Ryan: That’s how long it kept current. Anyways, it’s a beast of a machine, meaning I could run a ton of plugins, you know? Not that I’m a plugin freak, but just to craft the sound out I wanted to. I knew I needed some processing power. So that’s one way computers have changed. You just have like, you know, so much more power now than like in the early days of computer recording.
Anji: Yeah. The other thing is now we can have nearly infinite tracks. We’re not stuck with eight tracks or like in your case six tracks, I guess when you’re the SMPTE.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: Yeah, seven tracks.
Ryan: Yeah, so yeah, tracks aren’t even an issue now. It’s a non-problem.
Anji: Yeah. So if I’m like, “Hey, I want to do another vocal.”
Ryan: Or five more and then comp them down. Whatever. We got the tracks. Yeah.
Anji: You know, we don’t have a lot of stuff. We just have a few well selected things, you know? Like we saved up and between albums we’re like, “Okay, let’s upgrade a few things, you know?” Sell some stuff, get some different stuff, you know? Like we just we don’t want to have like a whole room full of crazy stuff.
Ryan: No. Yeah. You see other bands or studios where they have like a wall of preamps, a wall of compressors because they’re recording like eight dudes at a time, all these microphones on the drums. No, we just record one thing at a time, one voice, one guitar.
Anji: Just one really great mic.
Ryan: So I have one great signal chain handled. It’s like a single chain, I say, that could compete with any studio anywhere in the world. It’s that good.
Anji: Oh my gosh, you’re bragging so hard!
Ryan: I’m just saying that’s the secret. But they have to have like eight or 20 great signal chains, really expensive. Just get one good signal chain.
Anji: That’s true. Yeah, we’re only ever recording one thing at a time. That’s the thing. One instrument, one voice.
Ryan: Yeah. And if I have to, I have I could I could hack a second pretty good signal chain as well if I have to.
Anji: Yeah. All right. Maybe one day we’ll have to push it. Push it, do some live stuff.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: So wow, I didn’t even know we’re going to go off on this whole side tangent, but that’s kind of yeah, that gives you an overview of the album. Like the inspiration was I guess to compete with Cocteau Twins? Is that what it was?
Ryan: I just wanted to see if I could make an album that just sounded as good as theirs did. And yeah, I’ll let you guys be the judge about that. I’m very satisfied with how this album came out, you know?
Anji: Yeah. I’m pretty stoked too. And we really took our sweet time on this thing. We spent the most amount of years of any of our projects on this. Like our first album, I think we spent six months total writing, recording, the whole thing. This one, like more like six years.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.
Ryan: Yeah, I bought that computer in 2011, so yeah.
Anji: You say Cocteau Twins, but it’s not like would you say any of the songs actually sound like Cocteau Twins?
Ryan: No, it’s just more a soundscape, a texture, a vibe. I don’t sit there and say, “I’m going to rip off this chord. I’m going to rip off this lick.” I can’t like any of these songs of ours, I can’t say, “Oh, it sounds like this song from the Cocteau Twins, really.” I mean, it sounds like in a really vague sort of way, you know?
Anji: You know, I was just remembering that I let Barry from Joyce Manor hear the music and he said, “Oh, sounds like Cocteau Twins.” I mean, you know. (laughs)
Ryan: One song might sound like I think “Brother Against Brother,” the all acoustic song that you guys may have heard. We have a video for it. Maybe we could play a little play a little clip of it.
Anji: Like ‘Victorialand’?
Ryan: Yeah, some of “Brother Against Brother” reminds me a little bit of Cocteau Twins’ ‘Victorialand’, specifically “Whale’s Tail,” but it’s not a copy of it. And some of it, people say, is quite a copy of Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine.”
Anji: Which we covered “Welcome to the Machine.” And I’ve been meaning to put that on YouTube. Yeah, we did cover that. So I guess you probably had that a little bit ingrained.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: You know, I don’t know what I this that’s one of the older songs in the album actually.
Ryan: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Anji: Yeah. That video came out that single and video came out a long time ago.
Ryan: Yeah, and another song. Yeah, “Brother Against Brother.” I’m just completely 100% satisfied with how that song came out. Start to finish, every sound on there, every track.
Anji: Oh yeah. When we made that song, I was like, “Oh my god. This is amazing. This is some of our best work ever.”
Ryan: Yeah. I would have lost my ass back in the 90s if I made a song that sounded as good as that.
Anji: Yeah, I’m really stoked on that one. Honestly, I feel like your old fans –for the most part, you guys, his old fans kind of hate me. Like, they hate me. Like the really hardcore ones. They like his old singer and they’re always like, “You should work with Suzanne again.” But I always feel like if they were to hear “Brother Against Brother,” why would they not like that song as much as anything you ever did?
Ryan: Well, what do you like really? Do you like the personalities or do you like the music, the art, how it makes you feel? I mean, you know, there’s no way if you could listen to “Brother Against Brother” and be an old Love Spirals Downwards fan and just go, “Man, that sounds horrible.”
Anji: “That sucks!” (In a joking tone)
Ryan: There’s just no way.
Anji: Speaking of songs that you feel super satisfied with, I think we both really like “Are You Lonely.”
Ryan: Yeah, for me, I’ve told Anji this many times. For me, that’s like the pinnacle, the best song I’ve ever made, that we’ve ever made. You know, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my entire career. I mean, just the whole thing, again, from beginning to finish. “Brother Against Brother” is maybe a close second, you know?
Anji: I love that song.
Ryan: But yeah, “Are You Lonely,” I just… It came out 100 times better than I thought it was going to. Just like, for me, everything: all the sounds, all the production, everything in the whole stereo field, the soundscape, just nailed it.
Anji: You started with that little drum machine. I was like, “Oh, wow, that reminds me of like, you know, when when the Cocteau Twins worked with those little drum machines.” It kind of had that like cute vintage drum machine sound.” And I was like, “I really like this. I’m into it.” And we started working on a demo and then like you may not even remember this anymore, but you went to go swap out the drums to use more realistic ones and I think you maybe tried to make the time signature a little bit faster. And I was like, “No, wait, you’re destroying the song. It’s all about those cute vintage drum machines.” And then the song was like in limbo for a while.
Ryan: I was having trouble with the chorus where you sing, “Are You Lonely?” I was having trouble getting that to match up because the verse is so cool. I was having trouble making the chorus be either equally as cool or cooler. And I was having a lot of trouble with that. And finally I did something with the acoustic guitar and it all clicked together. When you’re making a song and it’s all clicking, it just comes naturally, intuitively. And I was having that problem making it all click for me. But I said once I figured out the guitar part, the acoustic guitar part, then the whole vision came.
Anji: Oh my gosh.
Ryan: So yeah, sometimes that happens on a song. You’re just missing that one ingredient that’s going to take it to the next level.
Anji: I wonder if you still have that project when you had changed it out. Like we should play a little clip of it.
Ryan: I probably have it. I always make mixes as I’m going along, so it might exist.
Anji: Oh my god. Maybe we can play you guys a little clip.
Ryan: I’d rather have it not be played.
Anji: Come on. Just a little bit.
Ryan: Let’s play the beautiful perfection of our song now.
Anji: Another weird thing about Are You Lonely is that, God, this years ago, we were writing that song so long ago, my hair was still only grown out to here. I was like 112 pounds. I started trying to make a music video on one of my older iPhones and I have all these weird clips where I was trying to film, like, the lyrics say “screen glows blue in an empty room,” so I was trying to get my computer to look blue and trying to film it.
Ryan: Does it look cool at all?
Anji: I think it’s interesting; I put these weird filters on it.
Ryan: I want to see this.
Anji: All right. The quality is very small, it’s not even up to today’s standards.
Ryan: I still want to see it.
Anji: All right.
Ryan: Speaking of “Are You Lonely,” our favorite song, it’s been catching on in some circles, huh?
Anji: Yeah, a little bit. I forgot to check it. I think it was the most listened to song from the album over on Spotify. I’ve been sending the album out to some radio stations and podcasters, like online radio. I’ve got huge news. Huge news! There’s a station called Soma FM.
Ryan: Been around for a long time, yeah. We’ve known about them for decades.
Anji: Exactly, like the whole time we’ve been a band. Soma FM, I didn’t even realize this until recently. First of all, he got his start at Burning Man. For a little while he was off the air because he had gotten busted by the RAA. Rusty Hodges, the owner of the station, he got scared because they were threatening to charge him $1,000 a day.
Ryan: That’s the crap they were trying to pull.
Anji: $1,000 a day for independent internet radio. So he was off the air for a while. He actually-
Ryan: Wrote to Congress or something?
Anji: Yeah. He actually gave testimony in Congress.
Ryan: Wow, that’s awesome.
Anji: Yeah. So he was able to strike a deal and he said he would pay, like, I think it was $2,000 a year he had to pay do Internet radio.
Ryan: Way more reasonable.
Anji: Yeah, than $1,000 a day.
Ryan: He better be making a lotta money!
Anji: But he doesn’t even run ads or anything. It’s all independent. Anyways, so he’s super cool and he’s always been really supportive. Dude! Even my Anji Bee album is still charting right now.
Ryan: Wow. Crazy!
Anji: It’s crazy. I was kind of like, “I know he loves Anji Bee and some of our more housey music, what’s he going to think about this dream pop kind of throwback?”
Ryan: They’re known more for electronic stuff, ambient dance, that kind of thing. Not 90s dream pop.
Anji: I know. I was like, “But Rusty’s a bro, I’m just going to send it to him and we’ll just see.”
Ryan: Maybe he’s like us, you know? Some people just like good music regardless of genre.
Anji: The cool thing about Soma is they have so many stations. He started with the Drone Zone, during that Burning Man Time, but now has a dozen different stations and there’s different DJs there. He’s always played us on a station called Lush, which is usually female vocals and sexy…
Ryan: Sexy vibes.
Anji: Sexy chill vibes. Yeah. So I sent it to him and looked at their website and was like “Wait a minute!” They’ve bee going crazy playing stuff from the album. Then I started going back in the playlist history, and it turns out ‘Life Goes On’ has been number one in their entire top 30 for eight weeks.
Ryan: That’s crazy. Number one for dominating Soma FM. Number one on several charts, too, right?
Anji: Well, yeah, ok. This is just for the Lush station. I haven’t even checked on the others. I just associate us with Lush.
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: On Lush we’re dominating a bunch of stuff. We were number one for like three weeks where I wasn’t paying attention. Then our friends Halou took over for a minute, then we won it back again, then Halou again.
Ryan: Take that Halou! We got the upper hand.
Anji: (laughs)
Ryan: We know you guys. If you happen to be watching, “hi.”
Anji: Halou are cool. They’ve been doing it for a long time.
Ryan: They’ve been making music as long as we have, basically.
Anji: We learned about Bandcamp from those guys.
Ryan: Yeah, actually so.
Anji: So I think we’ve been number one for the last three weeks. Right now the title track from the album is the number one song.
Ryan: “Life Goes On.”
Anji: In their top 30, their top 30, it’s tracks by spins chart. It’s a little confusing. They have a bunch of different charts. Tracks by spins and then by listeners.
Ryan: “Are You Lonely” was tracking on the listeners chart too, right?
Anji: It was number one on the listeners chart! I was like, “Oh my god, that’s amazing!”
Ryan: Number one.
Anji: Number one.
Ryan: Thanks. If you happen to be one of these Soma FM listeners, I’d tip my hat if I had a hat.
Anji: They’ve had, like, four songs from the album in heavy rotation. I remember wrote Rusty, I was like, “I don’t know if this album will totally be your cup of tea, but you’ll probably like ‘Spinning Circles,'”
Ryan: Which has a drum and bass feel, fits in the electronic vibes. But they’re taking the whole dream pop thing and going with it.
Anji: Yeah. Then weirdly, there’s another show…
Ryan: Oh, Below Zero Beats?
Anji: Below Zero Beats, yeah.
Ryan: Some more people we knew from our past albums.
Anji: Yeah, exactly! They’re a San Francisco/New York-based show and their show’s like three hours.
Ryan: Streaming stations.
Anji: Yeah, streaming, and now he also puts the archives of shows over on Mixcloud.
Ryan: Oh cool!
Anji: I was checking it out on Mixcloud. I want to say he played “It’s Alright” a few weeks back, and I was all, “Whoa, that’s a surprise!” But this week Mason played two tracks back to back. It was a double header.
Ryan: I see your notes here. “It’s Alright” and “Are You Lonely.”
Anji: I know! I was like, “Wow, that’s awesome, our favorite song.”
Ryan: I’m so happy, yeah.
Anji: Me too!
Ryan: Yeah, “It’s Alright.” We haven’t talked much about that, but that’s, as well, one of my songs on our album I’m super, super proud of. It came out near perfectly again.
Anji: That’s why we started the album off with it.
Ryan: Yeah, guys, when sequencing albums, try to start off with a really good song. Don’t make people wait to hear a good one. That’s my philosophy at least.
Anji: It’s tough because we’ve always kind of ended our albums on those really epic songs with those big, long endings. The kind of songs that haunt you and you think about for a long time afterwards.
Ryan: I still like to end with a great one, too. You just have to realize that a lot of people might not hear it, but I figure, “Hey! This one is for the people that are really listening and digging the albums.” Give ’em something special.
Anji: Totally. This time we kinda had a few anthemic songs, with those big endings.
Ryan: Yeah. And “It’s Alright” was one of them. It could have been the ending song.
Anji: It was, for a little while.
Ryan: For while, but we decided, “Nah, let’s put it up front.” ‘Cause it works great there, too.
Anji: Not to say we’re like The Beatles, but I was like, “This’ll be our “Hey Jude,” you know, like that seems like an album closer. I was like, “We can pull a little…”
Ryan: Yeah, take some of that philosophy. So that’s cool. I’m glad they’re digging it. And they sent us an email, like today, Below Zero wrote you.
Anji: Yeah, do you want me to read it to you?
Ryan: Yeah. What did he say again?
Anji: He wanted me to tell you something. So he said, “Tell Ryan that, when he hits that guitar note on “It’s Alright,” it’s like buttah! Perfectly timed, and love the 80s feel to it. Well done!”
Ryan: I know what he’s talking about when he says “that guitar note.” Because there’s a lot of guitar notes, but you’re talking about a singular guitar note, it’s when the solo starts near the end there.
Anji: I know which one too, it’s like, “NEEEEEHHHH-ehhhhhh!”
Ryan: It’s this big sustain-y sound, and again, it’s one of those magical moments where I had an idea and it just came out way better that what I conceived of. Sometimes things just work out better.
Anji: Wow!
Ryan: Often I hear something in my head, but I can’t get it to sound close to it, but sometimes it comes out better. This was one of those rare moments.
Anji: I was really stoked on that song. Yeah, so that song, not so much Cocteau Twins on that one, I would say. That one is maybe a little bit more like–
Ryan: Slowdive?
Anji: Slowdive, yeah.
Ryan: A little more like Slowdive. And people who are listening and curious, actually the inspiration for the beginning with the piano, the kinda moody intro with the piano, is Fleetwood Mac. A song off ‘Tusk,’ called “Beautiful Child.” It’s a Stevie Nicks song.
Anji: I love that song!
Ryan: Ahh… It’s one of the best Fleetwood Mac songs ever. Super beautiful sadness, moody, and that’s my wheelhouse, right there, those moods.
Anji: Oh my god, yeah.
Ryan: So I kinda combine that and Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, and I made our own thing. A little Mojave 3, too — which is a Slowdive offshoot, kind of.
Anji: Yeah. Also, when you got into that solo, it honestly kinda reminds me a little bit of “El Pedregal.”
Ryan: Oh, one of my old songs from Love Spirals Downwards, ‘Ever,’ yeah.
Anji: So, like, ‘Ever’ was his third album.
Ryan: That was an opening song, too. The opening track.
Anji: I was obsessed with “El Pedregal.” And I remember when we first started working together you weren’t playing guitar, you were just into programming and sampling, and you were like, “Yeah guitar, blah.” And I was like, “Argh! I really want him to do something on Ebow!” I always obsessed with you doing some Ebow stuff like “El Pedregal.
Ryan: Actually that was not an Ebow on…
Anji: I can’t believe it!
Ryan: I can’t remember what I did on “El Pedregal,” but I’m taking about our new album, on “It’s Alright,” that was not an Ebow. That was a secret effects sound that I crafted out.
Anji: What?!
Ryan: Top secret. Yeah.
Anji: How is that not Ebow? It sounds so Ebow.
Ryan: Not Ebow, uh uh. There is Ebow on the album.
Anji: I bet people are like, “What the hell is an Ebow?”
Ryan: Let’s see, where is my Ebow? It’s actually vintage. I probably got it maybe in the late 80s or early 90s.
Anji: That’s what I wanted to say, anyone that was cool in the late 80s had an Ebow. Like, all the bands I was ever into had an Ebow.
Ryan: You hold it above the strings —instead of a pick or your fingers— you hold it on top of the strings as you play and it sustains a note, basically infinitely. Like a violin bow, hence the name EBow.
Anji: Oh, an “electronic bow.”
Ryan: I used it on a lot of songs, let’s see, like… gosh, I don’t want to think that hard, but it’s all over the album. It’s all over “Will It Ever Be The Same,” in fact that solo is an Ebow, but on “It’s Alright” it’s not. Speaking of old school sounds and Ebow, strangely Love Spirals Downwards, my older band I keep talking about… We just reissued my last album, the fifth album, which is a career retrospective. It’s been out of print for how long? Out of stock.
Anji: Forever!
Ryan: Many many many years. What happened is that, a long time ago, the label –Projekt– sent us a bunch of these covers and stuff.
Anji: Yeah, it was like, “Do you have any need for these?” And I was like, “I dunno, but I’ll take ’em!”
Ryan: I’ll hang onto them. So I had sat on them for, maybe a decade?
Anji: Probably.
Ryan: And then a few months ago, he said, “Hey, I have a whole stack of discs I found for ‘Temporal,’ would you like them?” It was like, “Hell yeah! Let’s make them unite.” So we’re selling the rest of these original first pressing CDs of ‘Temporal,’ Love Spirals Downwards, “A Collection of Music Past & Present.’
Anji: (Laughs) This was like, the first Projekt thing that I worked on with you. Projekt is the label, by the way. I did the artwork and this is early digital photography. I think we were trying to figure out, like, “How can we say this is a ‘best of’ when it’s clearly not a ‘best of”?”
Ryan: It’s not a “best of.” A lot of the tracks on here, I put a little asterisk on the back, most of these tracks were never on an LSD –Love Spirals Downwards– album proper. Some were on compilations, and some were just my favorite songs on the actual albums, too, so it’s a mix.
Anji: Yeah, it’s definitely not a “best of,” in fact on Facebook I was asking his fans what songs they would have chosen if it had been a “best of,” and there was a lot of heated debate.
Ryan: (Laughs)
Anji: Although some of the songs that are on here made it. But, so there were like, 80 of these, I wanna say? Was it that many?
Ryan: It was more like 50ish.
Anji: Oh yeah, 50.
Ryan: 45, 50, something in that ballpark. We’ve sold a few already, ’cause you know, we blasted it out to the LSD fans on Facebook.
Anji: There’s like 50 of these but then, since it’s on Bandcamp, that meant that it was going to be available digitally there, in high quality audio. So I was like, “If we’re going to go to the trouble of putting it on Bandcamp, let’s include some extras!” 3 bonus songs.
Ryan: Uh huh. So, if you buy it on Bandcamp, there’s some extra songs on the digital download. And on Bandcamp, if you do buy the physical CD, you automatically get the digital download with the extra songs. Go to, if you’re interested, lovespiralsdownwards.bandcamp.com — and act quickly, because they have been selling. Once they’re gone, they’re gone!
Anji: Yeah, we’re not gonna print any more.
Ryan: These were pressed up like twenty years ago.
Anji Yeah. And speaking of stuff that is limited, we do still have some of our CD, and we have just a couple of these pins left that were made to match the album.
Ryan: They’re kinda tiny and washed out, but we’ll include that in your order.
Anji: They’re really cute, though! So once again, I did the artwork, but this is with the nice, really good, digital camera. The CD is great, if you’re still into CDs — which I’ve been surprised by how many people are– and we have been signing them.
Ryan: So if you do buy it on Bandcamp, this is lovespirals.bandcamp.com. When you check out there’s a little box you fill out if you want us to sign it, or if you just want to tell us, “Hey,” or whatever. You can leave a little message to us there. And if you are truly digital, you can get digital downloads on Bandcamp and you can also listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon — it’s out there! Right?
Anji: Yeah, it’s on everything.
Ryan: You can buy the disc on Amazon, too, if you want.
Anji: I think we might even be on that weird Beyonce…
Anji & Ryan: Tidal!
Anji: (laughing) That weird Beyonce thing, I don’t know. Tidal. So there we go, there’s the plug.
Ryan: Some people that this point might wanna actually buy the music.
Anji: I know! We’ve been talking about it. And you know what? We have one more thing.
Ryan: What? We sound like Steve Jobs here.
Anji: I know! We have one more thing.
Ryan: It better be cool!
Anji: It is! We have a brand new song which is like, a reworking/remix of our friends Karmacoda that just came out on their remix album, what’s it called? ‘Intimate Remixes.’ It was their song, called “My Love,” and they gave us the files and Ryan kinda reworked it, and I added in some vocals, he played some guitar.
Ryan: Yeah. A lot of people, when they remix –I’ve done this many times, too– you just kinda rip it all apart and arrange a whole new song. I did the opposite, I kept the same song structure where the verses and choruses went, but I changed some of the chords around and made it really, like a more moody song. Added guitar, added synthesizer, added my own bassline –’cause he had a synthesizer, and I go, “This needs a real bass guitar.” Then I got you to sing on it, too. So we kinda made it our own song. You’ll wanna check this out I think it turned out really cool.
Anji: So we kept his singer’s vocals and we just added to them.
Ryan: Added to them, made them big and lush, putting our really nice reverb that we were talking about earlier onto it.
Anji: Yeah, exactly. So I’m pretty stoked on it.
Ryan: Yeah, I’m really proud of that.
Anji: So you can also stream that. You know, even YouTube has this music, I should mention. Maybe not necessarily the extras from the ‘Temporal’ album, although, I did wanna mention quickly that one of the extras I put on the Bandcamp was a 2013 recording that you had made.
Ryan: Oh yeah!
Anji: It was kinda random.
Ryan: Yeah, just a quick story; in the middle of us making the Lovespirals album, ‘Life Goes On,’ I had the idea to, like, “Hmmm… Let me actually go back and try to recreate an instrumental from our second album, ‘Ardor,'” — Love Spirals Downwards’ ‘Ardor,’ and see how closely I could make it sound to it. And that’s what I did. It sounds pretty much exactly the same! I whipped out the same acoustic guitar, my Ovation, from back then.
Anji: Still has it!
Ryan: I got everything going on… It maybe sounds a little bit better because I have better reverbs and stuff like that.
Anji: Yeah, it’s a little bit cleaner.
Ryan: Yeah cleaner sounding, better preamps and microphones, like I was talking about. So that’s on the bonus tracks of the digital download for ‘Temporal.’ I think I have that up on the Love Spirals Downwards YouTube channel, as well.
Anji: Yeah, I think that’s why I asked you about it. I go, “Hey gimme the audio of that, that would be cool to make available!” So there we go. I guess there’s one thing we should mention, and that’s they we still haven’t figure out how to do a live performance for you guys.
Ryan: I’m getting closer, I think what I’ve come to the conclusion is, I need to have a second computer. I need my main iMac to do all the mixing and everything, then I need to send the audio out of that and into a second –like a laptop– and send that thought the YouTube streaming stuff.
Anji: Wow.
Ryan: That’s my conclusion. I need to probably borrow your audio interface, too, to make that happen. That’s why I haven’t tried it yet.
Anji: Alright, yeah.
Ryan: I put a lot of hours into this. I was hoping to do it all off one computer, and I’ve tried everything in the world, but it just won’t work for me.
Anji: This is exactly like when we tried to play live on — do you guys remember Second Life?
Ryan: Oh no.
Anji: In 2007, when our album ‘Long Way From Home’ came out, they were like, “You guys should do a live performance in Second Life on PodShow Island.” And we’re like, “Okay!.” And then it was, like, so hard!
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: But anyways. It feels a lot like that Second Life situation.
Ryan: But that is one of our plans for our Lovespirals Official channel, here, is to do a livestream right from here, in this studio.
Anji: If nothing else we should at least record one live song, just record it and put it up.
Ryan: Yeah, we’ll get something going on for sure.
Anji: We need something. We need content. So that was a long and rambling, definitely a podcast style thing. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Like I said, it’s gonna be up on Mixcloud in audio format, as well as the YouTube in video format. Hopefully we’ll do another one much sooner than two months from now.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. Make sure your’e following us on social media, too. We have an Instagram –Lovespirals Official — and our YouTube channel, as well, is Lovespirals Official. We’re kinda bad with the YouTube, but we’re a lot better with the Instagram.
Anji: Oh yeah.
Ryan: Make sure you follow us there for more regular content.
Anji: I try to be regular. Maybe we’ll livestream on there, like John Mayer.
Ryan: Yeah! Just like John Mayer.
Both: (laugh)
Anji: John Mayer knows how to use all the latest in social media, I’ve noticed. He’s really good at that.
Ryan: He’s pretty good for an old man, huh?
Anji: I know.
Ryan: Yeah. (Laughs)
Anji: Speaking of which, we’ll have to do a John Mayer episode when we go see him this year.
Ryan: Yeah, we’re gonna see him a few times this year, actually.
Anji: Wooo!
Ryan: Yeah.
Anji: Alright, so I guess we should shut this down. It’s pretty long. Do we have an official outro yet?
Ryan: Oh man, I forgot what we used to say!
Anji: Yeah, I don’t remember. I don’t know.
Ryan: So… uhh… listen?
Anji: Like, subscribe? Hit the notification button so you know when a new episode comes out, since it’s so random, you’re gonna need to be notified.
Ryan: Until next time guys, remember to keep it chill!
Anji: (laughs) Oh we’re going to do The Chillcast ending? (Laughs) “Doesn’t suck to play music!” (Laughs)
Ryan: (laughs)