Ryan and Anji sit down in the band’s studio to share all the latest news, including several archival projects from both band members, getting the podcast back onto audio podcast services, and the upcoming release of a brand new song! The duo even share a clip of “Used to Be” to close out this fun and informative chat. Preorder Lovespirals “Used to Be” on Bandcamp now!
The 2-time NAR Lifestyle Music Award winning musical project, Falling You, just released a new album entitled, Adore. Enigmatic band founder and producer, John Michael Zorko, has long worked with a revolving cast of talented and varied female vocalists including Victoria Lloyd (of Claire Voyant and Mono Chrome), Dru Allen (of Mirabilis and This Ascension), Erica Mulkey (AKA Unwoman), Shikhee (of Android Lust), and Love Spirals Downwards‘ own Suzanne Perry.
In her first appearance with Falling You, Lovespirals’ vocalist, Anji Bee, contributes lyrics and vocals to the ambient opening track, “Blessed,” penned about her relationship with bandmate, Ryan Lum, who engineered and recorded her vocal tracks for this long distance musical collaboration. Friend of Lovespirals and Falling You, Ken Lee (of Eleven Shadows), mixed and mastered the track (and indeed, the whole album) alongside Zorko at his Blueberry Buddha Recording Studios.
Lum’s former bandmate, Suzanne Perry, contributed lyrics and vocals to the track, “Champagne,” which follows Bee’s cut on the album. With its summery dream pop feel, Perry’s collaboration brings to mind her work with Melodyguild. Perry’s vocals were engineered and recorded by Melodyguild bandmate, Cris Miller (of Silver Screen). Perry had previously been featured on Falling You’s 2006 album, Human, and 2008 album, Faith.
Another highlight of the album is closing track, “Alchemy,” featuring Kirsty Hawkshaw. Famous for her work with Opus II, BT, Tiesto, and Delerium, Hawkshaw has a long and impressive list of dance music credits to her name. Her breathy voice and high harmonies add a lovely depth and focus to Zorko’s light-as-air beats and textures.
Though known for his melancholic mix of ambient textures and ethereal vocals, Zorko wanted to “explore a more optimistic side of emotional music and this gift called life.” To this end, Zorko employed liberal use of heavy, distorted, electric guitar in the vein of classic 90’s shoegazer acts like My Bloody Valentine and Ride, which may surprise his long time listeners!
Adore is available as a digital download now directly from the Magnatune site, with CDs to follow soon. Watch for it on iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc later this month.
Matt Rowe of MusicTap recently interviewed Anji Bee for a feature on the newly revamped music site. The piece goes into some depth about Anji’s thoughts on the current state of music while looking into the origins of her Chillcuts Digital label, the creation of her new The Chillcast with Anji Bee: 5 Years of Chillin’compilation, and how she selects music for her weekly podcast, The Chillcast with Anji Bee.
Anji, what prompted you to put together Chillcuts over five years ago? After a decade of being signed to Projekt Records, Ryan and I wanted to try releasing music independently for a change. The whole reason our debut album, Windblown Kiss, was released on Projekt was simply that Ryan still owed an album on his contract. I figured I had enough experience with online music distribution and promotion to handle a small record label, having done so much of that type of work for ‘Temporal‘ and ‘Windblown Kiss‘. I basically launched Chillcuts to release our second album, ‘Free & Easy.’ Ryan’s experience in building the back-end of websites helped me to create expensive websites on the cheap, while my experience in the visual arts and background in social media and promotions helped to drive sales. Oddly enough, it seems this first release is our most popular, which may speak to how much effort we put into making Chillcuts succeed right out of the gate.
Music has gone through so many changes over the decades. Do you feel that this generation of music provides enough in styles to help those caught in a decade of preference? First of all, what people need to realize is that there is a whole world of music that is not being played on the radio or TV. I get all the music I can handle and then some strictly from the Internet. And the variety of music available on the Internet is more vast that you can even imagine. It’s truly staggering how much great music is out there when you start searching for it.
What do you look for in a band that sends music across your desk? What do you listen for? The music needs to strike certain chords for me; I want to feel it in my gut. It could be a tear jerking lyric/vocal, or it could be a booty-shaking bassline/groove. It could be a gorgeous melody played on keyboard or guitar, or an amazing vocal harmony. It could simply be a really sweet string pad or a sitar hook — who knows? But I think there’s generally an element of authenticity in expression that I’m seeking. That’s what is wholly missing in the pop music industry. I want to feel what the artist was feeling when they were creating the song. I need to be drawn into that little world and feel immersed in it. Hearing a really sincere song is a bit like falling in love for me. Obviously not every song on the show can have that strong of an impact on me, but the more of them I can find and string together for a set, the better the show is.
“Happy Holidays” is the first all-original holiday song released by Lovespirals vocalist/lyricist, Anji Bee. Co-written with Lovespirals partner, Ryan Lum, “Happy Holidays” is a deceptively bittersweet pop nugget filled with heartugging disco-infused violins, funky bass and wah-wah guitar, with a relaxed house beat and a hint of cool wintry nights wafting through. Bee’s warm, enveloping vocals pleasantly recall Tracey Thorn (of Everything But The Girl) and Karen Carpenter with their laid back yet passionate delivery and personal holiday message.
Podcasters and Internet Radio DJs are free to include “Happy Holidays” in their shows. Check out Anji Bee on Mevio’s Music Alley (AKAPodsafe Music Network.)
Download “Happy Holidays” from the following digital stores:
The first single from Lovespirals’ fourth album, Future Past, to get the full remix treatment is “Love” – an atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass tune that recalls some of the duo’s earliest work together. A half dozen producers from different musical schools of thought set Anji Bee‘s poppy yet ethereal vocals to completely new musical scores. From angular drum ‘n’ bass, to lush downtempo, to atmospheric ambient music, this moody collection covers a lot of sonic ground. And Anji’s Chillcast listeners should be familiar with most — if not all — of the contributing producers which includes: Chill Factor-5, 7 Day Visa, Divasonic, Soul Whirling Somewhere, Xurba and Falling You (who, btw, created the only mix which contains Ryan Lum‘s original guitar solo.)
Remixes by Chill Factor-5 and & Day Visa are available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from LastFM (mark you favorite remixes with “Love This Track”) and SoundCloud. Both sites have built-in social media tools that allow you to easily repost links to emails, Twitter, Facebook, and other services with the “Share” pull down menus, so be sure to tell a friend!
Podcasters, DJs, Internet DJs, and music bloggers are all encouraged to share these tunes with their audiences, as well. If you’re feeling the love, please write a review of the Love EP as Lovespirals would really appreciate you giving them a little love in return.
Stream or Purchase the Love EP:
The Love EP artwork was created by ithinkitsnice and we think its nice, too!
Lovespirals will return to San Francisco for what is sure to be another great night at Harlot on July 9th, 2010. Once again, Anji will join Karmacoda for their amazing rendition of “Motherless Child” from Lovespirals’ 2007 Motherless Child EP, as well as backing vocals on one or two of the band’s original songs. Ryan will be doing iPad DJ sets throughout the night, including a special “Anji Bee” set between live performances by Divasonic and Karmacoda to debut several tracks from her upcoming new album. He’s sure to include a track or two from Lovespirals’ brand new Love EP, which includes a remix by Divasonic. Come add yourself to the Harlot Happy Hour Facebook Event page to let the bands know you’ll be there! Thanks to Sean Yamamoto for the pic of Karmacoda with Lovespirals from the last Harlot show we did together.
July 9th, 2010 7 pm to 10 pm No Cover, 21+ Harlot 46 Minna Street San Francisco, CA 94118 415.777.1077 www.harlotsf.com
Anji and Ryan are back after a 2 month hiatus with lots of news and stories. Lovespirals updated their recording studio ever so slightly with a 2nd vintage PCM 70 reverb unit and two new audio sampler packs which the duo have been using in their work on an upcoming Anji Bee “solo” album. The band go into a lot of detail as to the whys and whats of that project, and share a clip of their new version of “Love Me Leave Me” at the show’s close. The duo also talk about several recent Anji Bee musical collaborations, the new Love EP due out soon, adding more music to Lovespirals’ bandcamp store, taking part in the upcoming Karmacoda gig at Harlot on July 9th, and meeting Autumn Reeser at this month’s Thrilling Adventure Hour at Largo.
What? 2 podcasts in 1 month! Can it be? Ryan and Anji are back with plenty of stories including setting up and testing out the band’s new vocal set up on several musical collaborations and a new side project, attending the recent Air and AM show at Disney Concert Hall, making archival Lovespirals radio interviews and features available on the new Lovespirals Mixcloud account, (apparently) confused fans on the new Love Spirals Downwards Facebook page, chat about the upcoming Beth Hirsh show, plus Ryan shares a really nice fan email from Alex of Corpus Christi, and Anji plays the podsafe AM song, “Darker Days,” from his latest album, Future Sons & Daughters. Be sure to add yourself as a fan on Lovespirals Facebook page or follow Lovespirals on Twitter to keep up with the very latest!
eHarmony: Subscribe for 3 months dating service and get 1 month free using promo code EHAnji. Read all the details of this eHarmony online dating promo code
The Chillcast with Anji Bee podcast is hosting a special one-hour interview feature with Lovespirals this week. Ryan and Anji sat down in her podcast studio to discuss their brand new 4th album, Future Past, and give her listeners an overview of the band’s decade-long history. The band chat about their writing and recording process including our musical influences, album concepts, and the various stories surrounding our songs and albums as they listen to every track from Future Past and a few songs from their past 3 albums. If you haven’t checked out Anji’s weekly music show before, now would be the perfect time!
The Chillcast with Anji Bee presents the world premier of the video for “Home” by Lovespirals! This is the first-ever music video for Lovespirals, so we are pretty excited. The video was created using HD footage we filmed at the beautiful Newport Back Bay estuary, combined with footage from the ride home after mastering Future Past in Northern California. Its an intimate video with a dreamy feel that we hope you will enjoy. We’ll be making the video available on all your favorite video services soon, so stay tuned!
The first single from Lovespirals’ brand new album Future Past just debuted on The Chillcast #190. For those who don’t know, The Chillcast is the weekly chillout music podcast of band vocalist, Anji Bee (so she had a bit of an unfair advantage on premiering this track…) “Shine” is the opening track of the show, but stick around to hear this rest of this 1-hour set featuring new music by Fonogeri, Minus Blue, The Warheads, Jamie Lloyd, Amanda Blank, Groove Junkies, Dirrrty B, Dynamic Stab, and Blu Mar Ten. This track is available for other podcasters (as well as radio, internet, club or Second Life DJs) to play via Mevio’s Music Alley. “Shine” is also available on Lovespirals’ SoundCloud page for streaming, download, and reposting via their attractive embeddable player.
You may have heard about Lovespirals’ exclusive little pre-launch CD listening party from band Tweets or the latest episode of Chillin’ with Lovespirals (#70), but if not it was a small get together with a few San Francisco friends to both celebrate the completion of Future Past and to get some feedback on album. The party took place at the same groovy Victorian flat where the album photos were taken, which you can hear more about in Chillin’ with Lovespirals #64. Anyway, Ryan captured some video of Anji showing off the party spread moments before their guests arrive.
![Chillin’ with Lovespirals 92: New Song, Vinyl Sale, Reissues [Video Podcast]](https://www.lovespirals.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Chillin-with-Lovespirals-92-672x372.jpg)
