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.”

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

Bad band blogger, Anji!

I seem to have abandoned the Lovespirals site since creating my own Anji Bee site. Bad, bad, bandmember, me! It was a ton of hard work to get my new blog up and running, and I have to thank Ryan for helping me out with some style coding, and Julien Smith for a little pointed advice.

The bulk of the work, really, is just simple data input. I wasn’t able to get the data from my previous WordPress blog before it bit the dust, so I’ve been forced to recreate all my shownote entries using the sometimes wonky code from the PodShow site. Plus I’ve been adding in podcast artwork, missing band links, purchase links, etc etc, so needless to say, it has taken up quite a bit of time. But just because I haven’t been blogging over here, it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you all! Just waiting for the inspiration to strike, or something worth reporting, I guess.

Which reminds me, last night Ryan and I started writing song number 7! Here we are, in the midst of recording song number 6 (aka “Sundrenched Tears”), when the old muse tapped us both on the shoulders with another lovely idea. Thus far, we have a Rhodes piano melody and vocals, in the roughest demo form, but as soon as we’re done with our current tune, we’ll surely launch into the next one right away!

Chillin’ with Lovespirals #26: Kernel Panic


Ryan and Anji update you in the saga of Ryan’s new Mac Mini and how it affects progress on Lovespirals’ current recording sessions, reminisce about sneaking into NAMM, share Ryan’s “second choice” theory, make a big podcast announcement, and answer listener email, as Anji tries not to cough into the mic.

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new computer blues

no, i didn’t make a blues song with my new computer. we’ll actually i did sort of. on the latest song we’re recording, i turned the mac mini into a virtual minimoog synthesizer and recorded what i was playing manually via a usb keyboard right into protools. but what i’m really talking about here is how this new computer, which i’ve had just 4 weeks, is already in the shop getting repaired. the hard drive is bad. even the repair person at the apple store seemed really surprised that this would happen on such a new machine.

so i’m back to using old and slow computers in the meantime. at least i can still do basic stuff, like web and email. but no more minimoog in the meantime. i seem to have bad luck when getting computers. the ibook that i’m writing from right now smells like bad body odor because apple used crappy plastic back back in the day.

Chillin’ with Lovespirals Episode 25


In this fun Halloween episode the band chat about the evils of CRT monitors and B.O. iBooks, their scary LA Day of the Dead trip to visit Joyce Burstein where Ryan discovers the magic of Huichol yarn paintings, plus band news, listener feedback and more!

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Help Save the World

This is Ryan here. I’m not know for my political views but I believe having a clean planet to live on when I’m old transcends politics. Next Tuesday, Californian’s have an opportunity to help save the world by voting yes on Proposition 87, which taxes oil drilling companies here and uses that money to help fund research into alternative energy resources. I’ve been doing what I can to help spread the word. It’s really pissing me off how the oil companies have spent millions on television advertisements and basically telling complete lies to try to scare people so that they won’t vote for this.

Hopefully I won’t have to wait more than another year or two to get an ethanol/flex-fuel car that can run on either ethanol or regular petroleum based gas. ethanol fuel already costs a lot less than gasoline and pollutes way less than gasoline. The real beauty is that all of our nation’s ethanol needs can be met by our farmers, so no more sending billions of dollars overseas everyday to fund questionable governments and terrorists. Basically, if a few countries stopped supplying us oil, our economy would come to a halt. Scary.

I recommend reading this blog which is written by an expert, leader, and investor in this new eco-friendly future.

anjibee.com

Ugh, I can’t believe I’ve been putting off creating a site for myself for so long… I used to have an anjibee.com site a few years ago, but the coding was all mid-90’s and the info was out of date. Come to think of it, I based the current LSD site on my old code… Another site that needs overhauling! Anyway, rather than polish a turd, as they say, I just took my site down and have been waiting to work on it “when I have time.” Seems to me that day will never come, so I need to just *make* some time for it. I decided to do a blog, rather than a standard site like lovespirals.com, since most of my content will likely be podcast and vidcast related. I figure folks can subscribe to the whole site feed, if they like.

I honestly am not in the mood to design a site right now and have no idea what I want it to look like. I know what I want it to do, but the rest is a giant question mark. It is impossible to create something that you can’t imagine! And I feel like I should be working on so many other projects that I’m having trouble concentrating on site design. It’s times like this I wish that I didn’t do everything personally… Its hard trying to be good at a million different things and its exhausting! I need a staff of experts that want to work for me out of the kindness of their hearts. 🙂 Well, a girl can dream…

Ethereal Chillout Music