The Women of Mp3.com, Jianda Johnson

Jianda Johnson interviews Anji for a feature article on the now-defunct Women of Mp3.com Station.

JIANDA: How did you get into music, how long have you been making it, and when did you join Lovespirals?

ANJI: I’d say that I first got into music through my dad. One of my earliest memories is circling around the coffee table to “Here Comes the Sun,” when I was barely able to walk. I started singing very early, doing school productions from Pre-School on. Shortly out of High School, I got invovled with different garage bands, doing gigs, and recording 4 track demos. Strangely, I really always wanted to be a guitarist, but I’ve just never been very adept at it! I did play guitar in an industrial noise rock band for awhile, but it was a struggle for me. I played percussion in another band around that time too. It’s funny to think about those old bands now, in comparison to my work with Lovespirals. Speaking of Lovespirals, I began working with Ryan in early 1999.

JIANDA: Can you please explain the difference between Lovespirals and Love Spirals Downwards?

ANJI: When Ryan and I began working back in 1999 on Drum ‘n’ Bass tunes, he was in a transitional period, unsure if he wanted to make another listening album or start releasing 12’s instead. At that time, we weren’t sure if our stuff was going to be released as Love Spirals Downwards or as some kind of side project. We were just recording songs and pressing dubplates for him to spin in his DJ sets, not sending them around to labels or trying to get them released. Then I made those tracks available online through mp3.com and folks started contacting us to include stuff on compilations, so by now all of them have been released somewhere or other, which is really cool. But I digress… It’s tremendously hard to explain exactly where or how things changed between Love Spirals Downwards and Lovespirals, because it was all just a natural progression.

JIANDA: Catch us up to speed with the latest Lovespirals news — what’s new as far as your releases go?

ANJI: Our first album, “Windblown Kiss,” just came out June 18th, on Projekt Records. We’re putting together some live shows to promote it, beginning next month with 3 West Coast dates with fellow Projekt artists, Mira. We’re supposed to do a show or two in Mexico this October. Other places we are working on shows for are Los Angeles, Phoenix, and possibly Chicago. We just did our first (and second) live performance over Memorial Day weekend for ProjektFest, which was fun.

JIANDA: Do you have a songwriting routine/regimen, or do you just compose you “when the spirit moves you?” Do you and Ryan toss ideas back and forth in real rehearsal time, or take elements and play with them, layering in the writing/recording process?

ANJI: Generally, a song lyric and melody will come to me out of the blue, which I’ll capture on a little hand held tape recorder. I also write lyrics in my journal, with or without an attendant melody line. For Lovespirals, what generally happens is that Ryan will be messing around — either practicing guitar, or checking out some loops — and something will catch my attention. Oftentimes I’ll think, ‘Hey, that reminds me of that one song idea I was working on!’ so I’ll go grab my journal and start singing along. Other times I’ll just make up the lyrics right on the spot, like I did with ‘Our Nights.’ We usually jam our ideas out for awhile before beginning to record, which is when we perfect the song structure and come up with additional parts.

JIANDA: Have you been creative all your life? When did you write your first song? Piece of fiction or non-fiction?

ANJI: One of my baby dresses said “When I grow up, I want to be an artist.” I’ve always been into just about every aspect of the arts, from music to fine arts, from literature to acting, from sewing to magazine editing, and everything in between! The first song I remember composing was in Jr. High, called “West Wind.” Before that, I recall making up zany lyrics to pop songs, kind of like Weird Al. I always wrote stories, too, and illustrated them. I was the kind of kid who would get their work printed up in the school journal, newspaper, year book etc…

JIANDA: What kinds of feedback do you get from your fans? Your music has a very gentle, healing quality to it; do you get that mirrored back to you by fans?

ANJI: Fans have been great so far. People do write to tell me that my music soothes them. Some have sent me poems, or even love letters. I feel like I’ve definitely made some friends, through music.
Interviewed by Jianda Johnson for the now-defunct (but much loved) mp3.com