Anji Bee is the featured artist on the second episode of Inside The Machine, the new audio show of Nicholas Young, founder of Original Machine. She and Nicholas sat down for an hour long interview on Skype, which actually went a bit longer as the two enjoyed their discussion of independent music, radio, podcasting, and fine arts so much. The show revolves around the back stories of 4 of Anji’s songs, “Love Me Leave Me,” “Hand In Hand,” “Love Will Turn Your Head Around,” and “Put Some Music On (Intensity of Sound Retro Funk Mix),” all of which are included in full on the show.

2017 UPDATE: This station is now defunct, but this artist feature i archived on the Internet Archive account: AnjiBeeOnInsideTheMachine

Interview Transcript:

Nicholas: This is Inside the Machine, a weekly interview show where creators tell their story from beginning to the end. I believe that if we understand a creator’s motivation, we understand their art much better. My guest this week is Anji Bee, vocalist for Love Spirals, lyricist and hostess of The Chillcast, one of the longest running chill out podcasts online. I’m excited to talk about her long and storied career with you here on Inside the Machine. Get ready, because episode two starts now. This track is “Love Me, Leave Me” by Anji Bee, and the song is about 10 years old, she told me. It’s pretty interesting. It’s now become the ultimate collaborative song. She’s been doing it for a long time. It’s the ultimate song for tying up her career thus far into a neat bow. There’s so many interesting elements about that song, and she’ll be telling us about that in just a moment. But first, Anji, welcome to Inside the Machine.

Anji: Thanks for having me, Nicholas.

Nicholas: This has been probably about a year in the works. We’ve been talking on and off about recording this show, and now here it is.

Anji: Absolutely. Well, we connected through Zach Daggy. We were both doing a guest DJ stint with him, weren’t we?

Nicholas: And then long before that, I believe you perhaps were a guest on the Pod 5.

Anji: Oh, I was. Oh my gosh. It comes full circle.

Nicholas: This would have been 2008 or 2009. It was Zach Daggy, Dwight Dunlop, Ed Ovett, me, and I believe I’m forgetting somebody.

Anji: I forgot you were part of that. It completely slipped my mind. I think Ryan and I both came on the show. It was a really fun time. It was so chaotic with so many voices and people.

Nicholas: It was one gigantic Skype call.

Anji: Yeah, those were the good old days when all of us podcasters used to kind of hang out together online.

Nicholas: It’s definitely some memories for me, and it, I feel like, made me up my hosting game, even though I was part of a large conversation with many voices.

Anji:: Yeah, that’s actually similar to what I did. God, I don’t know. It must have been 2006, something like that? I did, oh man, what was it? The Pod, oh, was it Pod? Showgirls, the Showgirls podcast. There was five or six of us at any given time, and with so many personalities, it’s kind of hard for everyone to get a word in edgewise.

Nicholas: So tell me a little bit about this song that we just played, “Love Me, Leave Me.” It’s the ultimate collaborative track. There’s so much of your career wrapped up in it. So many of the people that you’ve met through your career took part in it. Give us the backstory on this a little bit, and tell us kind of where you are in your career at this point.

Anji: All right, well, that’s a lot to get out, but let’s see. So “Love Me, Leave Me” originally started… You know, it’s hard to even remember how it all got started, but someone online met me and shared some instrumental demos with me. And at the time, he was going by the name of Realm, and I have Googled all over, but I cannot find any trace of him anywhere. He totally disappeared into thin air, but he sent me this demo, and it was actually titled, I think, “Leave Me, Love Me,” or something like that. It had a little title on it, and all these lyrics started popping into my head as I was listening to his demo. It was a real jazzy, trip-hop kind of demo. So I laid down my vocal ideas, just kind of very quickly, and I sent them to him, and he was interested, and then time went by, and somehow we never ended up doing it. And like I said, he disappeared. So I had these vocal demos on my hard drive, just kind of sitting there, and I met another collaborator by the name of Rom DiPrisco, who’s very well-known, actually, in the, like, PS2, PS3, Xbox game soundtrack world. You can Google him and find out all his deets, but at the time, he was doing a project called Bitstream Dream, and he got various people online to contribute lyrics and vocals to his instrumentals, then he kind of released them independently. So I think we had already worked on one or two songs, and I was like, “Rom, I’ve got these vocals I think you might like. I’m going to send them over to you.” And before I knew it, he had turned it into a track, which was a really cool track. It was a lot darker than the original music that I had sung it to, and I always thought it kind of added, like, a little bit of a creepy vibe. And then he released it. It was a really cool song, but I always had kind of wished that I’d had a chance to go in and record the vocals, like, professionally, because these were just super quick demos.

Nicholas: And about what year would this have been?

Anji: This was in 2005. I originally recorded the vocal demos in 2004, sent them to Rom the following year, and he just quickly put out a song. Then I think we had another song at that time, and those two songs came out on one of his self-released albums, which he used to just sell via his website. He would literally burn the CD and send it out to people if they ordered it. But it’s not on iTunes or anything. You can’t find his version of “Love Me, Leave Me” unless you get it from some sort of illegal download site. And yet, all these people have it up on YouTube, and I’ll see it’s getting, like, you know, tens of thousands of hits. And I constantly see people referencing this song. And recently, a group of kids from, like, you know, modern-day Russia had approached me, and they have this tribute website to Bitstream Dream. And I don’t know, I guess they kind of worship Rom and I and everyone else who is in Bitstream Dream. And it wasn’t really because of them that I redid “Love Me, Leave Me,” I’d already planned on doing it, but it’s because of all of their encouragement that I really wanted to push this track from my album that’s coming out. And I actually decided to name my album Love Me, Leave Me as well. So, the reason this new version exists is after the fourth album that I recorded with my partner, Ryan Lum, as Lovespirals, after that was done, Ryan just kind of suggested, “Hey, why don’t we go back and revisit some of the songs that you’ve done in the past with online collaborators? You know, all those songs you’ve told me about that you wished were available on an album. Why don’t we, re-record those songs and write some new ones and release it all as a solo album?” And I thought that was a novel idea. It was a way for Ryan to work on recording music without having to go through all the songwriting process so I could continue to promote Future Past. That was in 2010. So, I could continue to do all the business side of Lovespirals, and he could continue to make music, which, of course, is the fun part.

Nicholas: Right, of course.

Anji: Yeah, it’s the fun part. So, it’s been kind of like a backburner project. We’ve been working on this Anji Bee solo album for about three years now, and I really like how “Love Me, Leave Me” turned out. It just turned out so much more professional than the earlier recording. And of course, I contacted Rom DiPrisco and let him know that I was redoing that song, plus I think two other of the songs that we’d worked on in the past. And he was all for it. He had always said that I could do whatever I wanted with any of the tracks that we recorded. And so, I’m finally, 10 years later, taking him up on the offer to release these songs on my own. And I’m pretty excited. So, yeah, when I started sharing the recording around with some of my other friends that I make music with online, a lot of them were really intrigued and wanted to take a crack at remixing it. So, I think I already have like six remixes of “Love Me, Leave Me” by various people all across the world. I just got another one in this morning, actually, from one of the guys that I met through the Rom DiPrisco Appreciation Fan Club coming out of Russia. And it’s kind of building a lot of steam. It’s really interesting to see all the positive feedback I’m getting on the new recording, and it makes me really happy. 

Nicholas: That’s excellent. And I have to say, while we’re only going to have time to play the original version that you just recorded and released, if there’s any of these remixes that you’ve put online anywhere, I’ll make sure, link to those in the show notes so that the listeners can get a taste of some of this other stuff. Because that’s the one thing I’ve always found interesting about your work is there’s so many things around you. You’re always doing this one core type of work, but there’s so many people around you who bring so much interesting material to the table in the form of remixes, guest vocals, what have you.

Anji: That’s true. I just, I love to collaborate. And yeah, some of my favorite collaborators are definitely involved with the Love Me, Leave Me packages. Notably, Karmacoda did a really great remix of “Love Me, Leave Me,” and Mr. Alpha, who’s recently remixed Karmacoda and I, as well. He did a fantastic remix. Lovespirals, of course, had to do a remix. The Grooveblaster had to do a remix. You know, all my super tight crew are in there. And now I’m introducing some new people I haven’t worked with before as well, like Den Jones, The Morphism, Daniel Knox. I hope I’m not forgetting anyone.

Nicholas: I have to declare my personal fandom for The Grooveblaster.

Anji: Oh, great. You know, The Grooveblaster used to send me demos as he was working on them to The Chillcast. When I first launched The Chillcast, The Grooveblaster was writing me all the time. And he just kept sending me all of these songs and demos until finally I said, “You know what? Why don’t I do some vocals for you?” We’ve been working together ever since, you know, like seven years now, I think.

Nicholas: The one thing that I find really interesting about your career versus some of the other interviews that I’ve recorded is your collaborations are based almost entirely from relationships you made online. So it’s interesting how, I mean, most of the Lovespirals work, most of your work that I’ve seen at least, and you can correct me if I’m completely off base, has taken place in the post-Internet world.

Anji: It’s true. I mean, not the stuff from the early days.

Nicholas: It’s not all recent. I mean, you’ve got a career that spans over a decade. So we have a lot of material to cover, but you formed those relationships with people online and it fundamentally altered your career path.

Anji: It really did. You know, you could almost make an argument for the fact that Ryan and I forged our relationship online. We met in person multiple times in Los Angeles. But it really wasn’t until I was on a trip in Boston, thinking about moving, and he emailed me like, “Hey, when are we going to get together and do an interview on your show?” Because back in 1998, I was doing college radio, terrestrial radio. I’d been doing it for three years. And he wanted me to interview him about one of his latest releases. And I was like, “Oh, you know, you don’t need me there. You could just do that with my co-host.” He’s all, “No, no, I’m going to wait until you get back. I want to do the interview with you.” And I was like, “Oh, really? Ryan wants to do the interview with me, huh? I guess I better get back to LA.” And, um, so I, I did interview him about his album Flux, which was the last album he did under the name Love Spirals Downwards. And then, you know, after we did the interview, you know, he kept emailing me or, you know, chatting with me and finally I went over to his apartment to listen to some of his new demos. And he was, like, explaining to me how his current vocalist wasn’t really into the kind of music that he was getting into, which was really electronica. They had previously been a lot more on the side of, like, shoegaze and dream pop and even kind of folk. And he was really interested in drum and bass, which was like the new cool sound at the time. And of course, trip hop. So he played me a couple demos and I was like, “Oh wow, I love this!” I immediately started thinking of lyrics to some of them. And so we kept contacting each other. And as you know, eventually we ended up forming a band together and the rest, as they say, is history.

Nicholas: And so for the listeners and general context of this conversation about what year is this?

Anji: Well, you know, it was the end of 1998 when I first heard the demos and then we started kind of slowly started working on music together in 1999. So, the first thing we ever released was a song called “Ecstatic,” which is just a pure drum and bass song, like nine and a half minutes long. And there’s really only a vocal sample of me on it. I’m just kind of saying, “Ooh ahh,” that kind of thing. And it took a while until we started to get into, chorus, verse, bridge type songs. But our first album came out in 2002 on the label that he was on at the time, Projekt Records. And that album is called Windblown Kiss.

Nicholas: And this is wonderful because I meet so many people who are using Creative Commons and Sound Cloud and modern Internet platforms and paradigms licenses and et cetera, to distribute their work and collaborate with other people. But this is happening 1998, 2000s, early 2000s, well before all of these ideas that we now see as impacting collaboration on the internet were even formed. 

Anji: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, the first way that, um, Ryan and I released a song was through mp3.com. That was like the cool platform at the time. And I sold a lot of music on mp3.com. It was a really great time. That’s how I first started meeting all the collaborators. That’s where I met Rom to Prisco. That’s where I met Chuki. My that’s where I met Dave of Dave’s Lounge for crying out loud. I made so many relationships through mp3.com in, uh, you know, at the new millennium, I guess you’d say, you know, 99, 2000, 2001, that’s where all this got started. It would have been right after when mp3.com went legal. It’s really weird. Yeah. And one of my early jobs actually back then was, um, I would write interview pieces and reviews of music for Radio Spy, which was Game Spy’s, radio division, which quickly disbanded after all of that commo started happening with the RIAA cracking down. But I used to get paid like 50 bucks a pop to write reviews of people like Hungry Lucy and, and Aslans and all of these really obscure online talents. 

Nicholas: It was good times, such a vast array of experience. Let’s go way back. Let’s see where all of this started. I think for most creators or, and hopefully for you, there’s always this, this spark of creativity when you realize that “I’ve got to, to create, whether that’s, I have to paint, I have to draw, I have to record, I have to compose.” When did you start this, this entire process? When did you wake up and decide that music and, and vocal performances were your core creative outlet? And really you couldn’t do much more than that?

Anji: Ah, well, there’s one little story I like to tell. Actually, when I was an infant, like a tiny infant, my mom, clothed me a little dress and said, “When I grow up, I want to be an artist.” And it’s true. I’ve always done–not only singing, but painting and photographing and layout and pretty much any artistic, you know, pursuit that I learned about, I dabbled in. I went to art school. I thought that I wanted to be a visual artist, but I was always writing songs and I was always trying to teach myself to play guitar or bass. And, um, I think I was discouraged because I don’t have a real knack for playing instruments, but I really, really, really, really tried all through like junior high and everything to learn how to, and in high school too. I took classes. I’m just not that dexterous, I guess, when it comes to guitars and keyboard, but I could always sing. Um, so it’s really just the singing part of my life really bloomed once I started meeting musicians who would sit down and spend the time to work with me on getting the songs out of my head and, and onto whatever medium we had. I mean, I first started working on four track cassette. Oh God, I’m really going to age myself here, you know, like in the eighties, in the late eighties?

Nicholas: It’s okay. Everybody ages themselves on this show.

Anji: Yeah. So, but I had written songs, like I had a music class in high school and I think, I don’t know. I think maybe I collaborated. Someone did piano while I sang. I have like really old tape recordings of myself singing these crazy songs. So I’ve always written songs and I’ve always sung along with other vocalists. And I think that how I learned to sing was really just from loving music so much and memorizing everyone’s vocals and singing along as how I first learned how to sing. But then learning to find my own voice was a whole other story. And that really didn’t happen until a little bit later in my life.

Nicholas: But you were obviously raised in an artistic household where your, your very garment encouraged you to embrace that part of yourself.

Anji: That’s true. I mean, it’s kind of funny. My dad really likes music. And so he had a huge record collection and he had like a special room, even, at one of our houses that had cork on one wall and beanbags and everything where we’d just chill out and listen to music on the weekends. So my dad definitely taught me an appreciation for music. And my brother’s actually a musician as well. He’s a guitarist and a songwriter, like super hardcore death metal punk hybrid, very different. But to tell the truth, that’s what I used to be into, too. When I was in high school, I went through a really angry period and I kind of got him into hardcore punk, but he’s taken it to a whole other level and he has like multiple bands. So the two of us are musicians. And I guess we got that from our grandparents. Both of our grandfathers had organs, like those giant sixties organs, at their house. So when we’d visit, we’d always be like, “Grandpa, grandpa, play the organ!” So I guess that’s where the music side came from. And as far as visual arts, that would be my mom. My mom always kind of dabbled in painting. Right now she’s more of a seamstress, I guess. She was really into quilting and designing costumes and she, you know, she wins awards and stuff for that in her sewing circle. So yeah, it’s a fairly artistic household, but no one turned out quite like me.

Nicholas: You’re the original. Tell me that you never had the, the, you know, long hardcore metal, like hair, the dreads, all that sort of stuff.

Anji: Me? No, I had Liberty Spikes. I’ll send you, I’ll send you a picture.

Nicholas: I should have made that the album cover.

Anji: I know, totally. I think I have it up on Facebook, a really great one of me in college with giant white Liberty Spikes.

Nicholas: So it started for you at a very young age and you were encouraged to pursue this, which is incredible. And I think that’s what I’m trying to say is a lot of the people that I talked to, that was, it was encouraged that they would develop that part of themselves, but to pursue it as a career or to pursue it as a lifestyle was a completely matter entirely.

Anji: You know, I was really left to my own devices growing up for the most part. So it wasn’t so much that I was encouraged, I wasn’t discouraged. I just, you know, my brother and I just kind of did what we did. And as long as we stayed out of trouble, we weren’t really hassled for it. But yeah, I did go off to art school, but I ran away after the first semester. So I don’t have a lot of formal training. It’s really just because I have such a passion for it that I teach myself how to do what it is I want to do.

Nicholas: So throughout high school, you were in the bands, you were trying to learn to play instruments, even though that doesn’t seem like it materialized and stuck until today. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Um, but you went to art school, do you feel that that first semester you spent there had any impact on you at all?

Anji: Well, the biggest impact it had was to illustrate to me how much I was not going to enjoy being told what art to create because I had always created art just out of my, you know, whatever the muse inspired me to do. But when I had to sit down and do projects for classes I wasn’t interested in, and projects that I wasn’t interested in and trying to do it in the timeline that they wanted me to do, is very discouraging. And it started to make me think, “I don’t think I’m going to be pursuing art in a commercial sense. That’s just not who I am.” Just like I wouldn’t be able to write jingles for television commercials. You know, I can really only do what I want to do and when I want to do it. So, you know, it just forced me to make really bold choices in life to just try. To figure out a way to support myself while doing the art that I wanted to do. And that’s why I’m an independent artist, I guess.

Nicholas: And so the first bold choice that you made was to walk away from art school after a semester.

Anji: Yeah, I didn’t want to pay all those thousands of dollars. It’s so expensive to go to a private art school. It’s like outrageous. And then all the books and all the paper and all the supplies you need, to just drain my bank account immediately. And I was like, “This isn’t going to work out.”

Nicholas: So you’ve done reviews for Radio Spy and so many other publications or online broadcasts, both terrestrial and online. Once you left art school, how quickly did you ramp up to actually working in the fields that interested you?

Anji: It took me forever. Actually, I might add that I ran away from art school with the drummer of a band. And then we started writing some songs. But I don’t know. He was on drugs and I had to get away from that situation. We ran away to Hollywood and that was kind of a disaster. He was in a band where the singer actually tried out, he was friends with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and he was going to fill in as the singer when Anthony Kiedis got kicked out for a little while because they didn’t want to deal with his drug habit.

Nicholas: It was kind of a weird time. It’s the dark side of rock and roll.

Anji: Yeah. And I was not into drugs at all. In fact, I had been straight edge in college. After getting involved with the hardcore punk scene, you see a lot of burnouts. And so I embraced the straight edge side of things. So I don’t know. I just thought, “This Hollywood is not the place for me. I’m getting out of here.” So I kind of left the whole music scene and went back to my hometown and just, I don’t know, licked my wounds and tried to get my thing together. I read a lot of books and just tried to get my head on straight. Got a job, which I hated, of course. And what I started doing first was doing music fanzines. Now, once again, dating myself, but in junior high, high school, I was really into Duran Duran and all this British music. Before I had gotten into punk rock, the local punk rock scene, I was really into imported music. And I was doing a Duran Duran fanzine. And I actually, of course, found a way to make money on that, too. But so, I’d had a lot of experience doing little magazines, which I created most of the content for, but also got content from other fans and Xeroxed them and sent them around the world — sold them to girls and sent them around the world — just based on Duran Duran. But later, after having got involved in the local music scene, of course, I was drawn to do something similar, but for bands that I was actually able to interface with and make friendships with. 

Nicholas: Right. 

Anji: So I launched I launched a fanzine called Positive Influence,which was primarily about the straight edge scene in Orange County and Los Angeles, but also about, like, the peace punk and crustcore scene and then just some other, you know, other punk and related bands. So I started doing that. And, you know, of course, I met another guy to hang out with and he was helping me on that. So, I don’t know, we put out like four or five issues and I met a lot of people through that.

Nicholas: I want to stress the point in here that you’re doing what you want and then twisting yourself and modifying your outlook on this project to create a monetary influx from that project.

Anji: I know. I don’t know how I do it.It’s just a skill, I guess. 

Nicholas: Yeah. 

Anji: Yeah. So I started doing Positive Influence and, you know, I started getting fans through that and I was selling them at all the local record stores and taking the bus all around to… you know, to sell the magazine. And then it just kind of went from there. You know, every time I would get into like a new scene of music, you know, I have a tendency to get really into something and then to become, I guess, uh, disillusioned. So after a while I got disillusioned with straight edge. I didn’t like the way that the vibe was changing, how the people in the scene were changing, how the music was changing. So I started hanging out with a new group of people, listening to a new group of bands, made a new fanzine. So then I started doing a fanzine called Substitution. And that was about, um, more about the, uh, “alternative music” they called it at the time — that name ended up getting co-opted by the majors for, you know, radio music. But so it was about alternative rock and Gothic and industrial music, and ended up becoming really tied into what we call the Jabberjaw scene. There was this club called Jabberjaw in LA, which was really formative. There’s actually a book coming out about Jabberjaw this year. That I wrote an essay for. So I’m excited about that.

Nicholas: What you were doing back then was very different from what we might call adult contemporary now.

Anji: Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty edgy. So, you know, I just kept doing a series of fanzines, but doing the fanzines is how I kept meeting all these different musicians. And it’s actually a lot like the story now with my show, The Chillcast, and how I meet all the musicians that way. So through Substitution, I started meeting different musicians and I, you know, I started working with them. I started working with people. I did actually play guitar for a while in a band and sang, with someone who also sang and played bass. We were called Figure 3 and we started doing some live shows. So that was really interesting for me. I actually experienced quite a bit of stage fright. So it was like, “Oh, this is horrible.” And we played live on the radio and a couple other things. So that was when I first started making music, like right about 89-90 is when I finally started publicly making music. 

Nicholas: Thank goodness that this is well before the in-studio cameras that radio stations now have where they stream the you know performances live to the web as well.

Anji: I know, yeah. Yeah I don’t know if I have a cassette somewhere of a of a performance that we did at KXLU. I need to digitize that stuff. So that was when I was doing four track tape recordings with the band Figure 3. 

Nicholas: And are there any existing recordings from that era?

Anji: There are. In fact i’ve been promising Sam –the the bass player slash singer– that I would digitize all that stuff but my my tape deck broke so I need to procure a new tape deck so I can digitize these things but yeah I’ve always been really into media and no matter how many times I’ve moved I always keep all of my cassettes and fanzines and stuff like that. I’ve always been really into media and no matter how many fanzines and everything that I’ve made –like all my radio shows are archived on cassette — I’ve got all this media that I’m really really anxious to get online. I just wish i had like more arms and more time to do it all. I need someone to just like come and be my unpaid intern and help me digitize all my content! I have been starting to get some of it up. The Substitutions for the most part are all scanned and up on Facebook and I started to put some of the Positive Influence stuff on there and I think somewhere a couple of my old songs are online. Some of the other bands that I’ve done… I’ve done a bunch of weird noise improv bands with people i met at the college radio station I mentioned earlier and some of those i’ve put up on the Internet Archive.

Nicholas: So when did you move into the world of of college radio and how did that transition happen from you being involved in and creating fanzines 

Anji: Oh my gosh I have such a weird history! Let me think… So I guess it’d be my third fanzine and Substitution, the one that was kind of like industrial gothic alternative um…

Nicholas: I’m kind of shamelessly leading you here because i know that that the radio gig eventually runs to you meeting Ryan.

Anji: Yes, exactly. Well yeah I know there’s there’s like so many people in so many places in my story there’s no way we could talk about it all in a hour it’s like impossible! I guess, you know, when I was I was working with another boyfriend slash zine co… they’re not really an editor but someone who’s helping me on my fanzine somehow. I think one of the people we interviewed maybe was a DJ, it must have been something like that. Oh I remember! Okay, so, while I was doing the Substitution fanzine I ended up meeting a guitarist slash songwriter by the name of Justin Johnsen, and he was doing a band at that time, called Ravensong, and I just kind of added some backing vocals, well I guess I did a few guest vocals on on his project. He was going to be interviewed up at KUCI 88.9 fm in Irvine by a guy named Dach who — Closed Caskets for the Living Impaired I think was the name of his show? Like a really long running goth show and while we were up there at KUCI talking to Dach somehow we just started asking like, “How’d you become a DJ here?” and he’s like, “Oh I just had to take a class and get certified and put some hours in and I got a show.” We’re like, “Well, heck let’s do that!” And I met so many people doing that. I still have friends today — I mean, really, I met Ryan from getting involved with KUCI, so yeah. So I took the class and we hadn’t even put in all our hours when the current music, um… God what do they call the main guy at the station I would call? 

Nicholas: The general manager, maybe music director?

Anji: Yeah, the music director, a guy named Chris Bradbury — who just got married by the way– but so Chris Bradbury was like, “Hey I’ve got this opening Saturday at like four o’clock in the morning. I know you guys haven’t done all your hours but you’ve you guys have really proven yourself around here and I’d like to give you that slot.” Which is really a loser slot, I mean who wants to do a show at four o’clock in the morning on Saturday? But we were crazy kids and we were like, “Whatever!” You know we’re usually going to shows on Saturday night, we’ll just stay up all night. So that’s what we did. We just like… We might go to see the Swans play and then just drive directly from Hollywood to Irvine and then do a one or two hour DJ set there. It was a lot of fun, actually, it was really great. It was good times 

Nicholas: Ah, what you can do when you’re so young!

Anji: I know. I like coffee and that was when coffee house culture was big so we just got super caffeinated and listened to crazy music in a dark studio, like out in the middle of Irvine. So weird. 

Nicholas: So Irvine California your first radio gig 4 a.m in the morning. It’s a radical time, but honestly, it’s when everybody starts in radio.

Anji: I guess so. You know the weird thing was you’d think no one’s listening, but we would actually get phone calls with requests or people stopping by the studio to hang out with us. 

Nicholas: And to much to my surprise, being involved somewhat in the world of radio myself, you would think that all the calls you can get would be people really drunk or really high but but you get some well thought out calls in the middle of the night, people who are just awake maybe they’re doing graveyard shifts or something?

Anji: Yeah homework. I don’t know. They’re just chilling out listening to college radio all night. 

Nicholas: So how did how did that evolve from 4 a .m slot where you were obviously having people listening but it’s not an upwardly mobile place for you to be? 

Anji: Nah. Well the thing was at that time KUCI was super forward thinking. We had the most amazing DJs. There was all the most cutting edge styles of music and we were very aggressively pursuing, I guess kind of like our competition would be a station called KROQ, which is, you know, all about like modern rock and in the past new wave. We kind of had a law in place that we would not play anything that KROQ played — which was hard to maintain at times, like when the new Air album came out or Massive Attack or whatever it’d be like, “They’re playing it over there,” but so we would try to play music you would not hear elsewhere. So all of us DJs got grew really close and we’re like a clan, you know, like a group of people all working together on a common goal and the other DJs and all the the management were really into what I was doing on my show, they could see how dedicated I was and how seriously I took it, so it was really easy for me to rise up the ranks. Actually I totally got involved — I think the first year I was there — I took over the program guide, obviously, since I had all that fanzine experience! I was getting together all the stories for the program guide, which is like a little magazine, and doing a lot of the layout and doing the editing and I just started doing what I do, you know, and then I got a job in the music office. I was in charge of going through the experimental music that came into the station and deciding what went out and getting people to review it. From there I ended up becoming the music director, actually, at the end of my third year. So I just spent a lot of time there. I got like a little bit of money per month for doing the job and I was just there all the time. I get obsessed.

Nicholas: For context for us those east coasters we know W-O-X-Y 97 FM, “the future of rock and roll” that was actually, in many cases, it began as a mirror of K-Rock bringing modern rock to the east coast

Anji: Oh totally, totally. I lived on the east coast for a while, too. I think I remember that station. 

Nicholas: They were only broadcasting to Cincinnati and surrounding areas but I believe there was a couple of transmitter upgrades that allowed them to cover greater and greater areas. Then I learned of them, being a native Alabamian which was well outside their coverage area, from their online streaming efforts which which began well before any other station was concerned with streaming online.

Anji: Oh that’s nice forward thinking.

Nicholas: So you eventually moved up the ranks, you became music director at the Irvine radio station. Which, of course, being the anti KROQ in California it’s going to be influential because you’re so forward thinking and the tide is definitely changing in your favor at this point through music history. So what was the next step? How did you establish yourself in radio? How did you meet the the guests and then eventually Ryan, who would go on to form Lovespirals with you? That was a multi-point question, my apologies if it’s too much.

Anji: Haha well gosh it’s so funny there’s so many personal stories here today. I didn’t do interviews at first on my show. Like I said, I was there three years. I can’t remember how I first started doing the interviews exactly but Projekt Records, who Ryan –Ryan Lum– was signed to at the time as Love Spirals Downwards… They had always sent me music for my fanzines to get reviewed and had, you know, given me money to run ads and everything — so it was just logical that we would end up talking to each other again when I was a college radio DJ. So Sam, the owner of Projekt Records, contacted me, like “Hey you know I’m promoting a new album for Love Spirals Downwards; do you think you can get Ryan on your show or on the station? We’d like to have him interviewed,” and I was like, “Yeah, no problem, because Love Spirals Downwards were some of the first cassettes actually –they sent us cassettes to review in my old fanzine– so you know, I was like, “Yeah i’m gonna do it.” I think at a Projekt Party and then I met him again at a His Name Is Alive show, so we were familiar with each other, so i was like, “Yeah I’ll totally interview Ryan on the show!” I actually interviewed him two or three times on the station. The first time was via the phone for his album Ever in ’96 and then in ’98 his album Flux came out and that was the time that I mentioned earlier in the show that he he contacted me via email saying, you know, “I want to go up to the station and do the interview in person and I want you to be there. I don’t want to just do the interview with Justin,” so um that’s just where it all started. We did the interview in person and while I was interviewing him about Flux I was just thinking, “Wow this guy’s really cool! Like everything he’s saying is like…” I’m really into the way that his day is structured and the way that he looks at life and I’m like, “This guy’s pretty cool. I think we should start hanging out,” and right after the interview he was like, “Hey I’m going to do this thing, I’m DJing,” actually at this cool little coffee house that a lot of us hung out at he’s like, “I’m thinking about going over there and checking it out,” and so, you know, we went out and, well he actually doesn’t drink coffee, but we went to the coffee house and hung out and then we went to another one of the DJ’s house and played Scrabble till like four o’clock in the morning or something. So that’s when we started hanging out and it was directly because of KUCI that we did hang out

Nicholas: And what a beginning! If it had it not been, for that we would not have had the music we have today.

Anji: I think so. I don’t think we would have really started talking music. I would have probably just kept thinking he was a guy that I that I interview and review, but yeah, getting to see him in person everything I was kind of like… yeah so that’s how that started and it’s actually because Ryan and I fell in love and I moved away from the Irvine area is why I quit working at KUCI and started putting all my time into helping him with his project which, um, you know eventually became my project too. 

Nicholas: So let’s jump back and play one of the first collaborations that came out of yours and Ryan’s –not only musical career– but beginning love life, which is really interesting. I just love these glimpses into your career into what ultimately became a long-running fantastic musical project. This is the radio edit of “Hand in Hand.”

Anji: Brings back memories! That was one of the first songs that I uploaded to mp3.com and it was it was a little bit more vocally robust than the previous song, “Ecstatic.” F finally got to inject some lyrics in there. It’s funny, though, because I’d written a little bit more lyrics than Ryan ended up using, but I deferred to his judgment because drum and bass was very much about taking samples of vocals rather than having full vocals at that time. SoI laid down these vocal tracks and I let him cut and paste them wherever he wanted. At that time i was very laid back in the creative process because I didn’t want to I didn’t want to step on his toes, if you know what I mean? Because he was already an established artist when I met him. He’d been doing a band called Love Spirals Downwards since 1991, so when I came onto the scene he was already really well known. You know, he’s got all these interviews in magazines and I just felt really blessed to be able to work with him at all, so I wasn’t going to push him to include me more on the song than he felt comfortable with. So this is the first version we ever recorded of the song “Hand in Hand” and it was actually pretty popular online and I was really happy to be to be accepted, you know, by his audience and to create some new fans for our work — which eventually was released under the name Lovespirals, the shortened version. Just like his website at the time was lovespirals.com but for a while there we were kind of working on music in secret, so this “Hand in Hand” mix was kind of a secret song that we had created that he really only played in his DJ sets and people on mp3.com would discover much later, gosh, I think on our our second or third album we created a new version of “Hand in Hand” where i finally was like, “Okay Ryan, I want to get all of the lyrics that i wrote back in ’99 into the song.” So we did a totally new version also called “Hand in Hand” and it’s a little more chilled out, but still has a little nod back to our old drum and bass days. 

Nicholas: So how did you feel, I guess both emotionally and intellectually, moving from the world of broadcasting and radio — which is obviously geared towards objectivity, you want to ask the right question to elicit the correct response from the person that you’re you’re working with or you’re interviewing — and now you’re you’re wrapped up in this creative process –and in his audience, as well. How did that transition work for you and what effects do you feel it made on you? 

Anji: It was a it was an interesting time period. I guess because i did have the objectivity of knowing the music business from the other side, you know, as the person that’s critiquing the art, as the person that’s promoting the art, as well as the person that’s consuming the art, it gave me a different perspective on being someone who’s who’s making the art — you know, knowing how other people are going to view it or trying to figure out, you know, where you’re going to fit this work into as far as genres and groups of people, and I don’t ever want to overthink my art when I’m making it, but of the two of us –between Ryan and I– I think I’m much more aware of the marketing aspect of things, trying to think, “Okay so we’ve got this song, now who would want to listen to it and how can i get it out to those people?” I’m always kind of thinking that way, so you know, there’s been times when Lovespirals were working on music where I thought, “Oh my god, why can’t Ryan just stay in one genre? I’ve finally built up this fan base in this one little area and now we’re making this song or this album that’s gone off on a completely different tangent! I’m gonna have to find a whole new group of people, I’m gonna have to find new radio shows, new websites, new magazines to pitch it to and I’ll get really frustrated with his because of that. But you know Ryan just keeps it a lot more pure than I do because he never thinks about those things when he’s making art. It’s funny, but i think that’s one of the things that’s made us work really well as a team, because he’s never swayed by what other people are doing or thinking and I’m somewhere in between the two. I get caught up, I get really caught up in the creation of the art, but then when i’m done i start –boom– I go into business mode thinking like, “Okay, I’ve got this track, now what can i do with it?” 

Nicholas: For the record, anything that you guys create in the future is always, of course, welcome here. We’ll play it on The Machine anywhere we can fit it in. I’ll spin it! It’s interesting how your experience in radio and the previous objectivity became, not a constant mindset, but a switch that you flip intellectually and hopefully gave you somewhat of an edge in the promotional market once you were finished creating the art

Anji: I guess it does. I know it sometimes frustrates Ryan that I think that way but, you know someone’s got to get the music out there and that someone is me. 

Nicholas: And so it begins so simply. How does your career as an individual and your career through Lovespirals begin to develop and bloom going forward? 

Anji: Oh you know, just more of the same. I just keep meeting people online, like yourself, and meeting fans. I have very personal relationships with our fans, as well. I just keep plugging at it, and eventually, you know, you start to catch the right person’s ear and they’ll turn me on to something else.So okay here’s here’s an interesting segue… So after leaving college radio to put time into my relationship with Ryan and the project Lovespirals, I missed doing all these mixes — obviously I was doing a radio show every week and I had multiple radio shows at one time, so I still had that urge to collect playlists and to share them with people. So i got into Internet media and I started to do Internet radio. I got into Live 365 and I started doing stuff over there. And then podcasting was invented. So obviously, I had to get on that. I created, you know, the Chillcast with Anji Beepodcast. And, you know, from there, I started meeting other podcasters, and one of the first podcasters I met was Adam Curry, the Daily Source Code. He had just started the Podsafe Music Network because he was afraid of getting in trouble with the RIAA for playing music on his show. So he wanted to create a library of music that he could pull from for his show and know that he had explicit permission from the artists or labels. So I uploaded a Bitstream Dream remix of Lovespirals, of course, you know, my core group. It was a remix of “Walk Away.” And then I sent Adam Curry an email, “Hey, I wanted you to know that I added myself and I think you might want to like this track, check it out!” And he actually previewed it, like, live on his show. It was kind of a big deal. He’s like, “Hmm, let’s see, lovespirals.com.” He like visited our website live and started saying that I was cute and everything.

Nicholas: Typical Adam Curry fashion.

Anji: I know. So he starts flirting with me on his show. And I was like, “Okay, you know, I’m going to use this as an in.” I started sending him audio feedback. And we started a conversation back and forth about the state of music and the RIAA at that time. And just about anything. So I became sort of infamous as a guest person on his show. And that brought in a lot more listeners to the Chillcast. But not only, you know, did he help me find listeners, but he’s the one who actually signed me to his network, which at the time was called, you know, Podshow Network. And I was one of the first 30 DJs or podcasters to join on. And that’s, you know, completely changed my life. I had never really thought about making money through podcasting, but he was on this big thing about “quit your day job.” And I was one of the few people that was actually able to make that happen. And I bet you’re probably not surprised to hear that after everything else I told you today. Of course, I figured out a way to make music while podcasting and continuing to do my music, which ultimately the goal of all this is to have free time to continue to write songs and make music and to help promote it. So it’s all working together in concert. I’m making music. I’m promoting it on my podcast. I’m meeting new musicians. They’re doing remixes. Like everything is working in symphony together.

Nicholas: And you’re in with the very, very early crowd. I mean, I remember the days before the Podsafe Music Network and it really was like the wild, wild west. There was very little enforcement, but there was also no legitimate path to being able to play music. Radio at the time was, was still struggling to figure out how do we license? Are the artists going to start calling at our door? And it’s, especially when you’re on an Internet radio station, you are two years at least ahead of terrestrial radio, but yet there were some podcasters and some strict, you know, people doing Internet radio that I knew that were getting in trouble. 

Anji: Oh, really? I never got in trouble. Thank goodness. 

Nicholas: I didn’t either because I mean, I was probably 2005, 2004, but I was distributing music and things online in the early nineties. But when podcasting finally became a thing back, when you were writing your feeds and everything by hand, it was a tedious task and it was a labor of love. You wanted to get this music out there and most of it was underplayed, but that didn’t matter. It was, it was still illicit. And, and so, yeah, I mean, I feel like what Adam Curry was able to do with, with Podshow was legitimize the podcasting industry, give you a path to monetization. My other friends, Neil Campbell and Callie Lewis were also able to get a path to legitimization for their shows as well. The world was changing in a big way, in a way that not only promoted the medium of podcasting, but gave people a legitimate way to play content on their show that they thought was interesting and to change their own lives as well.

Anji: Yeah, it was a great time. I’m just really lucky that I’ve managed to be in the right place at the right time, really.

Nicholas: And so you’re on with Podshow. You’ve got this, this podcast network. You’re continuing to collaborate with Ryan. You’re making more Lovespirals music. Your world is changing at an incredibly rapid pace.

Anji: I guess so.

Nicholas: I mean, looking back on it, it’s a different worldview, I’m sure.

Anji: : Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty great. It’s nice to have a certain amount of, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like, it’s just nice to have people recognize, you know, the value of what I was doing. Cause I, you know, I’d been doing these things all along for free on various places. Like I was doing playlists on mp3.com and, you know, I would get feedback from that and I would get feedback from my Lovely Ladies of Electronica show on Live 365, but to actually have my show picked up by a network, and then I got to be on the Sirius FM. What do you call it? Adam Curry’s big Pod Show, I think? I was part of the Sirius thing there too. Like, you know, I felt, I felt kind of special.

Nicholas: It was on the XM stars channel, I believe.

Anji: Yes, that’s it. Yeah. So I felt like, “Oh, I’ve hit the big time.” And then I guess around that time, too, is when I started, I was a guest. I don’t know. I guess I was a guest DJ for a while. I was a guest DJ for a radio show in Canada too. I was doing so much work. I started to get a little bit too busy and I had to quit doing the radio show in Canada, but that was interesting. You know, having a terrestrial gig that was not through college radio and it was also done online. I had so much going on. I had a couple of, as always, I had a couple of different podcasts going on, too. Cause I was also doing the band podcast, a channel of Lovespirals. And like I mentioned, I started doing Show Girls with, you know, Cali, the Rumor Girls, um, Share from Rock and Roll TV, KFC. I felt like, “Wow, I’m pretty special.”

Nicholas: I would say you were, from my perspective at the time. Just knowing some inside people, but mostly watching it all go down. You were what amounted to podcasting royalty. 

Anji: I guess so. But it’s weird. Cause you know, I’m just here in my house, in my studio, you know? It’s not like, you know, I don’t see the crowd of people that are into it. But I guess I just recognize it now because a lot of the people that discovered me back then are still following me today. You know, they’re contributing right now to my, to my Bandcamp singles –“Love Me, Leave Me”– people that met me because of Adam Curry’s show are still following me today. Super loyal. It’s a really awesome feeling. 

Nicholas: That’s wonderful. And so let’s find something from that, that era and play that as well. Cause your career is changing. Your music is changing the opportunities for your music. To be heard are changing. Is there a track that represents that era?

Anji: Well there’s a lot of things that I could play, but I think what I’d really like to play is something that came about because of The Chillcast. I think maybe even on the very first episode, I played a band called Karmacoda from San Francisco. I used to be really flirty on the first year or so of The Chillcast and I would say crazy things. Like I literally remember once saying like, “Oh, I want to have Karmacoda’s baby.” But I, I don’t know why I’d say these crazy things. I guess I was flirting with my audience. So I was flirting with Karmacoda, I guess you’d say, on my show and we became friends after that. I started talking to them about working with them on music and we became friends after that. We ended up coming up with –a few years ago now– like, a really amazing collaboration between me, the two singers of Karmacoda, I mean, Heather and B, and Beth Hirsch, who was one of the people I’d played, you know, way back in college radio, as well as on my Lovely Ladies of Electronica Internet radio station. Somehow magically all of us came together through The Chillcast. I’d done an interview with Beth. I’d done an interview with Karmacoda. And we all wrote this collaborative song, called “Love Will Turn Your Head Around.” It was really fun to work on. B sent just like a snippet of music and him singing to me. Then I was inspired. I wrote some more vocals over the music. I sent that to him. Then he sent that to Beth Hirsch and she came up with some more lyrics and vocals. And then finally Heather came up with some more vocals on top of that. And then B took all of these, these four different storylines and crafted this amazing song, which is like the ultimate in online collaboration. So this is “Love Will Turn Your Head Around,” the radio edit.

Nicholas: The track is called “Love Will Turn Your Head Around.” It’s a collaboration with the band members from Karmacoda, which is again, one of my favorite bands. I love to listen to their stuff. And Anji Bee, of course, who is our guest today on Inside the Machine. This is interesting because it’s a collaboration that came about because of your radio show, but also features you on vocals as an artist.

Anji: I know, it’s so weird. And the really surreal thing too is Beth Hirsch, who I unfortunately only mentioned in passing. She had done two collaborations with Air on their seminal album, Moon Safari,which was one of those albums that we kind of fought about over at KUCI. It was an amazing album and everyone was super in love with it, but we were like, “Should we play it or not? Is it too mainstream?” Which it’s so isn’t mainstream looking back now, but it was such an amazing album. I think we all just thought, like, everyone in the whole world knows who Air is, but they’re one of those bands that’s really, really big in their sphere, but maybe your mom and pop haven’t heard of them. But so Beth Hirsch is the one featured singer on that album. And I always thought, “God, I wish I could sing like her. She’s so amazing.” Like she’s so incredible. And the two songs on that album really encapsulate, like, the early falling in love period for me and Ryan. So just hearing her voice makes me think really good things about, you know, that millennial period. And I don’t know, a few years into The Chillcast, I had gotten an email from like Ariel from cyber PR, you know, like saying, “Oh, I’m promoting the new Beth Hirsch solo album, and she’s looking to do interviews.” And I was like, “What? I could interview Beth Hirsch? No way!” I was like, freaked out. I spent all this time getting my research together, like making sure I had all the best songs and I knew all these facts so I could just do this killer interview. And we were talking on the phone and my first thought was just like, totally like, “I’m not worthy!” So I was like, “Oh my god, I love you so much, Beth! But, I’m going to keep it together for this interview.” So we did the interview and we got along so well, and she was so nice, that we started corresponding after that. And I guess I had turned her on to Karmacoda. She ended up really loving their work and said she’d be willing to do vocals with them. And I had already been going to do some work with them. So it was just really awesome that B thought, “Let’s combine all of these vocalists in one epic song”. And I’m still like kind of pinching myself that it happened. Beth loves the song so much too, that, she wants to include it on her next solo album. I think it might be coming out this year. And anyways, I loved the song a lot too. We all, all three of the acts, I guess you’d say, we all love the song so much. I was pushing, I was like, “You guys, we should do some remixes of it,” and kept pushing. And then I got that ball rolling. So we kind of recently released a remix set of “Love Will Turn Your Head Around.” And one of the remixes, of course, was by Lovespirals, my band. I redid the vocals on it and Ryan changed it up quite a bit and came up with a really beautiful remix. And Beth has decided to include the Lovespirals remix on her album. I’m like, “Yes, this is amazing!”

Nicholas: And it all comes full circle. You do things for the love of music, for the, for the love of this art form. And it ultimately comes back around to you and changes your life and ultimately gives you more and more music, more credentials, more access to work with.

Anji: It’s so weird. Yeah. So that’s my life. That’s, that’s just how it works. I just do stuff and more stuff happens.

Nicholas: But the seemingly universal thread that runs through it all is the love of what you’re doing and that that is incredibly, immeasurably important that you love what you’re doing so much that you would do it anyway. Even if it wasn’t for all the perks.

Anji: Yeah, absolutely. The perks are great though. I love the free music.

Nicholas: No, you cannot deny that that’s great.

Anji: Yeah. And I love promoting people. I mean, if I’m, if I’m really into somebody’s music, I automatically want to talk about it and to be able to talk about it in a way that brings more respect to that artist, or that song, or that video. It’s just great. You know, it’s great for all of us and cross promotion is real. It’s what makes the world go around. So I’m super happy to be part of something that just keeps the ball rolling for everyone. 

Nicholas: And that’s my very core goal here with Inside the Machineis to tell the stories that I believe need to be told. I understand that my story, and that your story, and to the teller of the story, it may not seem so grandiose. It may not seem so great. But when you release that narrative into the wild, the impact it has is always immeasurable. Someone will listen and decide that they, too, can do something creative and release something good back into the world. 

Anji: You’re so right, Nicholas. It’s absolutely true. I think the best way to change the world is to just… The easiest way to change someone’s mind is not by telling them something, it’s just by illustrating through your own actions. So a lot of people have wanted to start a podcast because of me, I’m sure because of you. Or people have wanted to release music free or to get into remixing because they see the fun that I have with it. A lot of people join sites because I’m having success on the site. I guess I kind of provide a roadmap of where you can go as an independent artist. And especially now in the world of the internet, when people ask me, “How do I X?” I tell them to do it. Just do it and put it out there. Don’t release anything that you’re not proud of. But when you put things out there, you will get better. The community that will surround you will sharpen your work. It will make you better. And in many cases, of course, you’ll have some haters. There will be some people who dislike what you’re doing. 

Nicholas: That’s called the world at large. And the internet sometimes seems to amplify that. But in many cases, you will find people who give you responsible, constructive criticism. You can then incorporate into what you’re doing and continue to improve.

Anji: Specific names come to mind when you say that. But I have to admit that one of my favorite things to do is turn a hater into a lover. If someone hates me online, I will specifically try to change their mind about me. And it usually works. It’s crazy. If you’re just nice to the people that are mean, usually you’ll find there’s some sort of underlying sadness there.

Nicholas: What’s in store for you? Obviously, this new album, the full-length Anji Bee solo album, which is amazingly in the works.

Anji: Yeah, that’s the main thing right now. To tell the truth, right now what I’m doing is I’ve had a little glitch in my monetary income just this year. My money’s taken a nosedive. I had been planning to press my own CDs and sell them. You know, Bandcamp and Amazon and all those places? But then I got a little bit scared. I’m like, “Do I really want to invest $1,000 into self-releasing a CD when I don’t know if I can sell them all?” You know, self-doubt always creeps in. And so, I just decided, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go ahead and release these. I have all these “Love Me, Leave Me” remixes. I’m going to release them in a series of like two song singles. And I’ll charge $2, $1 per song, but I’ll give people the option to pay what they want. If they want to donate, extra money towards me pressing the CD, you know, that would be great. But if they don’t, you know, no problems, you know?” So, I’m on the second single now. And I’ve been really happy. People have been really generous. I’ve already made like, well, counting sales of a compilation I did a few years back called Five Years of Chillin‘, which celebrated the five-year anniversary of The Chillcast, I’ve made about $300 so far, and it’s only been a month. So, I’m starting to feel a little more confident now. You know, I almost have enough money to press the CDs. And what I’ll probably do, I’m going to release like, I think, three more of these singles and just see, you know, see how much funding I can bring in that way. Hopefully, that’ll be enough. If not, then my next step would be to go ahead and make the full album available as a pre-order on Bandcamp to hopefully get a little bit more funding. Then I’ll press the CDs up and then release it out into the wild. And, it’s been three years coming. So, obviously, I’ve got a lot of emotion, you know, like backed up like, “Oh, I want this so bad.” But I’m hoping by the end of summer, the whole album will be out. And then I’ll start jumping on that promo train. And simultaneously, Ryan and I are already like, I think, five songs into a new Lovespirals album, which is some of the saddest music we’ve ever written. It’s really beautiful and really sad. And it harkens back a lot to the early Love Spirals Downwards material that I was, you know, like reviewing for my old fanzines. It’s another one of those full circle things. Ryan’s kind of returning to his roots. And, it’s going to be a really great album. So, I’m a little bit anxious to get Anji Bee’s album out into the world so I can put my Lovespirals hat back on and start working on that. And I anticipate the Lovespirals release will come out next year.

Nicholas: It sounds like there’s so much amazing stuff in the works for you.

Anji: There is. And I have a really big single coming out, too, with a trance artist called Aerotek. It had gotten signed to one label called Perceptive, and we were all ready to get it out into the world and then he had a counter offer from a big independent label in Chile. So, he’s like hustling around, changing things around. And I guess that’s going to come out on another label sometime this year. So, I’ll let you know about that when it happens.

Nicholas: Okay. Well, let’s figure out where everybody can find you online. Obviously, you’re everywhere. All the time. This wealth of knowledge that you’ve collected over the years. When you open up every episode of The Chillcast, I can hear this cool, calm, collected vibe. I don’t know if that represents how you feel when you’re recording it, but it translates well onto the air. It’s almost like your experience comes to this focal point. And there’s so much knowledge behind the microphone that it just… Thank you. It’s really… It’s entrancing for the listener. So, coming out of that, how does everybody get plugged into your world?

Anji: I suppose the most direct route would be AnjiBee.com. I’ve got The Chillcast with Anji Bee audio show on there, which you can listen to it directly on the site. You can download the files directly from the site. I’ve also got the Chillcast Video show where I promote one usually independent music video every two weeks. And you get to see me while I talk, which I know people used to wonder what I looked like when I was a little more shy. So, you can see me introduce a song on there. I also put all of my Anji Bee solo and collaborative stuff up on there. And I’ll announce Lovespirals stuff, but the bulk of my Lovespirals work is over at lovespirals.com, where you can see our whole huge history of music and everything over there.

Nicholas: And you are, of course, AnjiBee on Twitter. And you have a Facebook page. So, wherever people want to get connected.

Anji: Mix Cloud, SoundCloud, you name it.

Nicholas: Well, tell me a little bit about this last track that I want to close out with. It’s a real rocker. It’s “Put Some Music On,” the Intensity of Sound retro funk mix.

Anji: Yeah. So, “Put Some Music On” was a song I wrote the lyrics originally… Ryan was strumming guitar, I think, I don’t know, when we were working on our third album. And I came up with this, little vocal, but it never got used as Lovespirals. I always kind of returned to it and loved it. And then my good friend, The Grooveblaster, he sent me an instrumental. And I was like, ooh, “Put Some Music On” would fit this pretty nicely. So, I recorded the vocals and sent it to him. But as it turned out, when I was recording the vocals, I actually got Ryan to do the recording for me in our Lovespirals studio, and he was really into them, as well. And he’s like, “You know, I’d like to take a crack at making music for this.” And I was like, “Yes, I always wanted to do this song with you.” So, we made an arrangement that The Grooveblaster would release his mix and we’d release our mix. And it’d be, you know, no harm, no foul. It wouldn’t be a remix. It would just be kind of like, it would be on his album and it would be on my album. But he was working with this label called 3345 for some singles. And it turned out they were into the song. He did a remix release with them that had both of our mixes, plus two mixes by a band called Intensity of Sound. I believe they’re German. And another remix by 3C. So, that was really exciting for me. That came out, I think, two years ago. And I really loved what Intensity of Sound did with the retro funk mix. Although I think their house mix, some deep house excursion may have been slightly more popular in the charts. But I love the retro funk mix. So, I’m really glad we’re going to close out the show today with that one.

Nicholas: So, yeah. Thank you so much, Anji, for coming on the show. It’s been fantastic to sit here and share this long discussion with you. To hear you tell your story, which has so much depth to it. And I hope that there’s a lot of elements in it that the listenership will be able to connect with and realize that if you just do what you’re passionate about, that some good things will always come from it. So, this is our final track here on episode two of Inside the Machine. It is the Intensity of Sound retro funk mix version of “Put Some Music On,” of course, featuring Anji Bee on vocals.