Anji’s podsafe music show, The Chillcast with Anji Bee is now part of Adam Curry’s Podshow lineup on Sirius Stars 102 every Tuesday night at 7 pm EST/10 pm PST. If you don’t have Sirius satellite radio, you can still subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite RSS reader!
Anji's Top 20 of 2006!
I thought I’d put together a Top 20 list of my favorite podsafe songs of 2006, then I realized I should present it as a podcast. Duh! It was fun to put together, but boy were the shownotes a pain in the ass… Anyway, I did all the hard work so you can just enjoy the tunes and direct links to the band’s mp3s and websites. Lucky you! Check it out.
Anji Interview Feature on Podcast Alley
Anji is currently a featured podcaster on the Podcast Alley site. Check out her “6.5 Questions” interview:
The 6.5 Questions
1. How long have you been podcasting?
I began my first podcast, Chillin’ with Lovespirals, in June 2005. Before that, I had been producing prerecorded music features as early as 2002, for both terrestrial and Internet radio, including my own Live365 station. It’s too bad I didn’t learn about RSS enclosures earlier! The Chillcast began in January 2006 via Internet Archive, then was officially launched on PodShow in March.2. How many shows have you done?
As of today I’ve done 42 Chillcasts, 26 Chillin’ with Lovespirals band podcasts, and 8 Chillin’ with Anji Bee vidcasts.3. How has your quality/performance changed since your first show?
A lot! Not only is my sound much more pro, but the overall tone and production value. I’m constantly upgrading my gear, so it sounds better all the time.4. What podcasts do you listen to and which are your favorites?
My regular podcasts are Diggnation, Mysterious Universe, commandN, and the Daily Source Code, though I often skip through a lot of that since it’s daily… I just became regular with In Over Your Head, since I’ve pledged to lead Julien’s cult fan army. I also keep up pretty well with Dave’s Lounge, Tea with Hungry Lucy, and Senator Barack Obama’s Podcast. I check in from time to time with Accident Hash, Rumor Girls, Infected, The Lounge King Show, Inside the Net, and lots of others.5. Tell us about your show and who should be listening to it?
The Chillcast is a weekly music show with commentary that offers a cosmopolitan blend of Electronica, Jazz, Soul, and World music. I play a wide variety of genres and styles, seldom repeat artists, focus on recent releases, and always offer plenty of information about the songs. From time to time, I do special artist interview features, or other one-off shows to keep things fresh. Listeners say my voice is as relaxing and sexy as the music I play, so I guess that’s one of the show’s draws! From the feedback I receive, my listener base seems like a pretty varied mix of age, gender, nationality, and musical taste — all with the common goal of chillin’ out, whether they are commuting, working, or relaxing at home. One listener in France says he and some friends get together Tuesday evening with a bottle of wine to listen to The Chillcast!6. What is your background (especially if relevant to your podcast)?
I come from a long background in music, actually. I took recording classes in college, had 3 years in college radio as DJ and station manager, I created 4 different music fanzines, wrote music reviews and interview features for IGN’s now defunct RadioSpy site, I’ve been in a number of bands and collaborated with many others, and I’ve been really active in the online music community since 1998. So, I know a lot about independent and underground music.6.5 Is there anything else your listeners should know about you, your show, etc?
I’m a multifaceted person with abundant curiosity and drive to create, so you really never know what I’ll be up to next. From my music show, to my band podcast, to my vidcast, you’ll see many different sides of me. I’m always coming up with fun new ideas and looking for others to collaborate with. Which reminds me, other podcasters and bands are welcome to contact me to get involved with The Chillcast!
Chillin’ with Lovespirals #28: Booze Cherries
Anji and Ryan sit down for their final episode of the year! Topics include Anji joining the Sirius Stars 102 show lineup, embarrassing moments onĀ iLike, the Podsafe Music Network, fan feedback, Anji’s new Show Girls podcast, Lovespirals’s first living room concert, and more! We share a clip of Ryan’s 1999 recording of “Little Drummer Boy” featuring his previous singer, Suzanne Perry.
Additional Links:
Anji's Top 10 Holiday Songs
Matt Rowe tapped me for a list of my Top 10 holiday tracks for musictap.net this week! You might be surprised by a few of my choices… I actually looked at my hit count in iTunes to verify what seems to be my biggest holiday themed songs. I decided not to include any Lovespirals or Love Spirals Downwards related tracks, even though I do enjoy listening to them… Anyway, here’s my list:
- “Last Christmas” by Wham!
- “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano
- “Winter Wonderland” by Cocteau Twins
- “Little Drummer Boy” David Bowie & Bing Crosby
- “Aspenglow” by John Denver
- “Candle Song” by Mojave 3
- “25th December” Everything But The Girl
- “St. Patrick’s Day” by John Mayer
- “So This Is Christmas” John Lennon
- “Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo” South Park
Podsafe Music Network Sells Lovespirals Mp3s
Lovespirals tracks listed on the Podsafe Music Network are now available for purchase, including several tracks unavailable on iTunes or other digital retailers. Now fans can buy the band’s 1998 collaboration with Monkey Bars, “Beatitude,” a radio edit of the first track Anji ever sang on, “Ecstatic,” the Bitstream Dream remix of “Walk Away,” and the Podsafe edit of “Free and Easy.” Downloads are 99 cents each, processed through ClickandBuy. Visit Lovespirals Podsafe Music Network page to preview every song in it’s entirety before buying them.
Chillin’ with Lovespirals Episode 27: Super Sweet
Anji and Ryan are back with the latest band news — including a big, big podcast announcement and a big, big CD sale, plus more music geekery, and listener feedback, including an audio feedback from CC Chapman of the award winning Accident Hash podcast!
LINKS:
Lovespirals mp3 page updated
I finally got around to updating our mp3 page, adding in an audio player chock full of tracks, as well as links to all of the most popular music sites we’re on. I think I’ve hit all the places folks normally check out music at. If I’ve skipped anything important, hopefully fans will let me know… Will ya?
Dominating PodShow’s Downtempo Chart
Checking out the new relaunch of the PodShow+ site which now includes the Podsafe Music Network, I noticed Lovespirals, is dominating the Podsafe Music Network Downtempo Top 10 chart. We currently hold the number 1, 2, and 9 spots. Not only that, but we hold the number 2 and 5 spots for Most Played This Month, and number 1 and 6 spots for Most Played This Week. (One of my Bitstream Dream collabs holds the number 2 spot for this week, as well…) So, I guess you could say we’re “Podsafe Downtempo Darlings”. I always did like that term, “darlings.”
Lovespirals.com Holiday Super Sale
Lovespirals’ 2005 CD, Free & Easy, is now just $9.99 through the lovespirals.com webstore – as always, personally autographed by the band. Wait there’s more: an autographed 11×17 Free & Easy promo poster will be included FREE with any order placed by the end of the year! And don’t miss the 2 CD gift set for just $19.99.
new computer blues over, i hope
i’ve had my mac mini back for close to a week now and so far so good. the apple store repair person said bad ram and possibly a bad logic board, which they replaced, were responsible for the troubles. i thought the hard disk was messed up since the i was unable to boot up from the drive and data was missing. i did a little goolgling on the matter and learned that bad ram can lead to drive problems, so i hope they were right. i must say that apple handled this wonderfully the whole way through and got the repair done fairly quickly, even though i took it on a friday night and thanksgiving/black friday was on the following thursday/friday.
so other than that, the mac mini has been a kick ass computer. small as a portable drive, powerful as huge desktop computer. space is limited in my studio, where the mini lives, so i fully appreciate it’s size to power ratio. this makes me think; whenever i may upgrade our main studio computer, a g4 tower running protools 24, i may get a mac mini. suppose i do this in two years; the minis by then will be perhaps twice as powerful as my current mini. if and when that happens, i’ll get a few more cubic feet of space back in here.
Gearwire Artist Feature on Lovespirals
November 28, 2006, Gearwire Artist Feature, Patrick Ogle:
“On Pro Tools, GarageBand, And Pitch Correction: Lovespirals’ Ryan Lum And Anji Bee”
Ryan Lum has been making electronic based music for a decade and a half. First working with Suzanne Perry in shoegazer/ambient/electronica band Love Spirals Downwards and now in the successor project Lovespirals with new vocalist Anji Bee.
Lum’s music has ranged from the beautiful, meandering, shoegazing of Love Spirals Downwards to the new project’s fusion of downtempo and electronic jazz. Between the two bands Lum has released 9 full length releases and one single. Yet despite this electronica pedigree, Lum and Bee often eschew the electronic cutting edge for what some might consider old-fashioned [musical values]. Lum especially eschews the over-use of plug-ins.
“Two big reasons I don’t go crazy with audio plug ins and all: first, my computer is a bit old and a bit too slow and outdated for going nuts with that stuff.” says Lum “Second, I don’t really need them beyond basic stuff like compressors. I’d rather use a good rackmount reverb than a plug-in. Plus, some plug-ins just sounds horrible.”
Continue reading Gearwire Artist Feature on Lovespirals