Anji and Ryan of Lovespirals chat about their upcoming Cinco de Mayo show with Mr. Meeble in Pheonix, last weekend’s show in Long Beach, an eBay auction of their posters, fan email, Second Life, and more.
I just launched a new podcast on Adam Curry’s Podshow Podcast Network called The Chillcast with Anji Bee. It’s a half hour music show featuring chilled tunes in genres from downtempo to deep house, trip hop to dream pop, electro lounge to old school jazz & blues, and more. The show was inspired by my Live365 radio station, Chillcuts, which was in turn inspired by my older show, The Lovely Ladies of Electronica. Basically, I just keep widening my circle of musical styles as time goes on. Anyway, I’d love to have you come check the show out at http://chillcast.podshow.com.
Feel free to hit me back and let me know what you think!
Daily Source Code followers will likely be familiar with the infamous Comic Strip Blogger, who comments religiously on Adam Curry’s blog. I recently mentioned him in some audio feedback to Adam, and now CSB (as Adam calls him) has mentioned me in his comic strip! Now, that is usually NOT a good thing, but I was somehow spared his wrath and appear in a fairly positive light. Of course, I should remind him that Ryan was the one to the sell the 50,000 CDs, not me…
Ryan and Anji discuss the creation of Lovespirals’ new CD, Free & Easy, detailing specific tracks, and comparing this 2005 release to their 2002 release, Windblown Kiss. Audio clips from every track on the album accompany this 15 minute interview feature.
Interview by Isobel Geo for Fiber Online, Oct 26, 2003
ISOBEL: What changed in the Lovespirals sounds with your entrance in 1999?
ANJI: The sound was already evolving in 1998, moving towards something more jazzy and funky than previously. Ryan was working with Doron Orenstein, a trained jazz saxophonist, when I joined. Adding my jazzy and soulful vocals helped to further that evolution. As we continued to work together, my song writing style brought a more poppy edge to the music. The biggest change I brought to the band was that I encouraged a collaborative song writing technique, which had been lacking in the band up to that time.
ISOBEL: The last album was Windblown Kiss released last year, so what’s the new Lovespirals’ plans for albums, tours, or remixes?
ANJI: We’ve been writing and recording new songs ever since we finished touring for Windblown Kiss, and are about half way done with an album now. Soon we need to start preparing a new live set that includes all of these new songs. Right now we are getting together files for a remix competition using our new song “Walk Away” that PeaceLoveProductions will be putting on. We are currently seeking a label to release our next album, as well as looking into possibly doing them ourselves.
ISOBEL: Anji, and your project, Plastic Chair, how’s that going?
ANJI: Plastic Chair are going to have a track or two included on an upcoming Monolog Recordings compilation. Chuki has been searching for labels to release our first full length album, but I don’t think he’s settled on any one yet.
ISOBEL: In your opinion will new jazz be the future of electronic music?
ANJI: It seems to me that NuJazz has already been a fairly strong force in electronic music since the mid to late 90’s, though I suppose that has mainly been a UK thing. It always seems to take a few years until America catches up with them, so maybe it hasn’t really even begun here yet. What I’ve been hearing lately, though, is an insurgence of 80’s ElectroBoogie/ElectroFunk styles hitting the US labels that were previously doing Jazz/Soul/Funk inspired Electronica.
ISOBEL: Does Lovespirals has a brazilian bossa nova influence? Tom Jobim, Vincius de Moraes, Astrud Gilberto?
ANJI: I love Bossa Nova and was trying to influence Ryan to make an Astrud Gilberto type song for me to sing, but it came out a little differently… The song was “Our Nights.”
ISOBEL: Nowadays, what’s the strongest influence in the band’s sounds?
ANJI: As always, Ryan’s influenced by whatever music he’s listening to. For instance, during the writing of Windblown Kiss, he was listening a lot to Led Zeppelin, Pat Metheny, and Miles Davis. His music picked up some Jazz and Blues elements, yet we hardly sound like any of those artists. Lately he’s been listening a lot to Pink Floyd and Talk Talk. Of course, Ryan prefers to listen to music when he can focus all of his attention on it, so that isn’t very often. He likes to absorb albums slowly. I, on the other hand, tend to consume music. I’ve been listening to all kinds of stuff, but mainly music with very soulful vocals, from the 1970’s to now. Strangely, Ryan cites long boarding as being a big influence right now in his musical thinking.
ISOBEL: Are you very critical about another electronic music styles and hypes?
ANJI: I suppose we are both fairly critical of music. I think we are most critical of bands that don’t change over time, but seem to be stuck in one type of rut. We both enjoy a wide range of musical styles, including various electronic styles, rock, pop, and jazz.
ISOBEL: And are you critical about your own work?
ANJI: Sure, we’re totally critical of our work. We constantly seek to improve our skills and learn more about music. We never want to do the same thing twice, really.
ISOBEL: Who writes the songs, you or Ryan, or both? What subject always has taken in lyrics?
ANJI: We completely collaborate on all our songs. Ryan does the bulk of the music writing and performing, with input from me — particularly as far as the song structure goes. We work the songs up together, starting with either a guitar melody and vocal, or a keyboard melody and vocals. I write all of the lyrics and vocal melodies. My lyrics are generally about personal experiences, though sometimes they are imaginary. I like to write about love, primarily, but I also write about other subject matter.
ISOBEL: How can I describe Lovespirals?
ANJI: We’ve been referring to ourselves as Jazzy Electro-Acoustic Dance & Pop. That kind of covers it all. Our music is a mixture of Jazz, Soul, Blues, and Electronica with plenty of mood and melody. Sensual female vocals and beautiful guitar drive the songs, with funky keyboards and organic percussion keeping the rhythm. We’re currently dabbling in genres including Down Tempo, Deep House, NuJazz, and NuSoul, but we’ve also written in many other styles in the past, including Atmospheric Drum n Bass, Lounge, Folk Rock and more. We’re all over the board!
You can read Isobel’s Portuguese article at FiberOnline.com.
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
Tom Schulte will interview Anji for the Outsight Radio Hours on Sunday August 4th. You can listen to the Outsight Radio Hours streaming live Sunday from 6 to 8 pm EST (3 to 5 PM PST) via LUVeR Underground Radio; just enter the following URL into your Real Player: http://64.23.9.139/luver/luver.ram. Outsight is also a featured archival broadcast of the Music Sojourn site and Live 365.com.
An upcoming Playstation 2 game, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 features a new Machineries of Heaven song that includes a vocal sample of Anji. “Cylkoid” is to be 1 of 3 menu songs which play when the game loads up, alongside a new song by New Order. The game is set for release March 2002.
