Dream Pop

"It’s kinda funny, I listen to lots of electronic stuff but most of my music is very acoustic guitar based. I go back and forth between pure acoustic music and then I let to go full on with my analogue drum machines and samplers and just tweaking knobs and stuff. Just to keep things fun… I guess if I did too much of one thing I’d get kind of burnt out."

"I make what deeply moves me and what feels right and don’t worry about what kind of genre it is. I probably cut across too many genres anyway to be considered as being a part of any genre. I’m just some guy that makes music in my bedroom. Scenes and genres don’t exist in my bedroom."

"Of course you never know if somebody else is going to like it. You know immediately if you like it. That’s what I do. I write what’s going to please me, not somebody else: not the record label, or some unknown hypothetical band somewhere."

"When we create, we don’t worry about what style or genre it is. We just do it. Labels are useful for stores and marketing, but we create from feeling, not classification."

"Where we are now is pretty much what I have expected. I never wanted to try to become a huge band like Nirvana. I'm happy with where we are at."

"I don't have this big scheme or plan; I may stop soon, or I may go for another ten years!"

"Our music exists outside of any particular time or place. It’s music to be listened to today or tomorrow. When you hear a song from a certain era, you usually have to have lived through that time to fully understand it. With our music, that’s not necessary."

"I've been in choirs and have had some voice class, but I have not had any formal long term training."

"We were actually going out before we started doing music together. I had never done music with anyone before."

"He had a couple other singers before, like he was trying my sister out. It's funny because I was in London at the time going to school, and he was sending me tapes with my sister on it, and I thought, 'I can sing that. In fact, I can sing that better!"

"My sister was singing with Ryan, maybe like one or two songs, and then I was going to school in London for awhile and hearing tapes of my sister's, and they never really got off the ground and did that much stuff. So I came back, and basically a little bit after that, we started singing -- I started singing on his music... It wasn't like we were singing together a lot or singing together live a lot. We did two songs together; we crapped one and kept one, then we did two more, which gave us three songs. We sent them out to Sam of Projekt and that was it. That's how it started."

"We just decided to fool around with doing music, but actually Ryan resisted me singing on his music for awhile because he thought it would cause problems in our relationship."

"The first song we ever made was "Forgo," which is on Idylls. I had never written a song before. I just got in there and started humming in the microphone and that's how it happened. And we listened to it and we thought, 'Hey, that's not too bad!' And then we just made a couple more and just sent them out."

"What it was, was that we were coming to the end of the summer and we had set ourselves a deadline. We did 3 songs and sent them out to 3 places and figured if no one called us on it, we'd just keep making music."

"We got a card from one of our friends who goes to art school... Susan, Sam's girlfriend, goes to school with our friend."

"Ryan Lum - guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, percussion, programming, sampling, recording, mixing, production"

"We had to scramble to make more songs for Sam to listen to. I call us a 'Made to Order' band; we write only what is required."

"We didn’t have one and we were trying to figure out what to call ourselves. I think this is funny --and Ryan gets mad when I tell this but-- we were calling ourselves “The Flower People,” from 'Spinal Tap.' The whole idea of a band was a joke to us. In L.A., but probably everywhere, you meet people and they’re all in a band. So we thought it was stupid. When we put the demo tape together, we didn’t have a name. The only other band names we had made up were jokes, funny names."

"People try to decipher a meaning in our name, but honestly, there isn’t one. It’s pure aestheticism. Beauty matters to us for its own sake. We’re aware that Love Spirals Downwards sounds like “LSD” to some people, but our music isn’t meant to “alter consciousness” or be psychedelic. It’s just music with an emphasis on beauty and feeling."

"I don't see myself as an artist or as a musician. I don't think about it as part of my identity... My music is something where I walk in and do it, and it's not something I think about in my everyday life. I don't dwell on it, or think, 'This or that will be a great part for a song!' When I'm in the studio, it's sacred, but I don't carry that artist persona around with me at all."

"I've gotten conditioned to only do it in there. I have to have the microphone on and we make the songs up as we're recording. It's like going to church and you have this experience."

"He’ll usually do the whole music and play it for me, and I’ll come up with ideas, just notes and things, either on my own or with him."

"As far as vocals go, I'll usually listen to a completed - or near completed - instrumental and just start humming some catchy notes into the microphone, find some that I like, then do a rough recording of them and see how they sound. If I wait a day or two and see if the notes stick to me, I'll sometimes try to write some words or phoentics to them. We get a mood for a song and if I think it has an Italian or Latin mood to it, I'll try to almost mimic that language to evoke that sort of mood. The songs in that way, at least on Idylls are more thematic. I tried to do something different with Ardor where I thought I'd maybe write some words to it. There are definitely more actual words on Ardor."

"Some of them are in English and they make some sense, and some are in English and they make no sense. And there are others that are in a "make-believe" Italian, and then there's a kind of "make-believe" Latin, but I don't know Latin or Italian. And there's some French too... and some Indian, too, make-believe Indian. Most of it doesn't make any sense. Some of the new stuff actually does have a little meaning. Still, even if it does, I don't pronounce it well enough so that you can tell. When I'm singing it, I'm not concerned with pronouncing it so that you could understand it. I guess its not meant to be understood."

"I'm not really sure what prompted me to do that. I have a couple theories about it, though. The first theory is that I don't know how to write lyrics, so that's the only thing I think I could come up with - the only thing I could produce. The other theory is that I like doing it."

"It's a lot harder for me to write words that are personal than to write nonsense lyrics because I'm getting into things that I reveal about myself. I don't know how comfortable I feel with expressing myself in that way or putting that into music."

"It's amazing how little I think about my music. Like I never realized all the images it evokes... But I guess I don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to write. I don't necessarily think it's my gift. I'm not bad, but that's not the means by which I express myself. And I don't know how much I want to reveal of myself, like the really personal stuff."

"I compartmentalize my music. It's something I do as a hobby and a side thing, and I don't really mix it with my life. Even my everyday emotions I don't think I mix with it. But every so often, I think it seeps in. It's interesting, because it truthfully makes me uncomfortable. In some ways, I think it's kind of sappy and too expressionist to put your life in your music like that."

"To me it’s very separate, I mean, writing poetry or writing prose --literature and that-— is completely separate from music. I mean, I think that’s why a lot of times we use nonsensical syllables and just whatever sounds good because… it’s about sound, you know? Really for us it’s about sounding — I don’t know — beautiful or whatever we want it to sound like."

"I don't even think about it like that. It's not part of my identity. I don't go around saying, "I'm in a band." That's usually the last thing I mention."

"I don't think I could just sit and do only music, it wouldn't be enough. I'm not ready to quit and do music now. I wouldn't quit Psychology."

"I hope people have a good experience, or a positive experience, but beyond that, I don’t expect people to get much from it. That’s not my intention when I make it. I don’t even know why I do it. It’s fun for me. It’s fun. When you get past that, you get in trouble. Nobody ever experiences anything like you want them to. And who am I to want people to experience in a certain way? Beyond that, I can’t even control that… I can’t control if people are going to buy it, or even care about it. I really loathe the music business."

"If you can listen to a song that you created, that you wrote, and it still gives you the chills even after listening to it over and over again, that’s a good song."

"For a long time I felt that we hid behind the effects."

"I experience different emotions for different songs… longing, desire, disappointment, escape. I prefer the overall impressions a song makes upon you. I find words to be limiting in that they are usually intended to convey meaning. I don’t want to impose that much on a listener or myself. I believe our songs aren’t about “getting it”, instead they are about experiencing what is created. I like to think of the music we make as art that is intended to be experienced by every individual in their own way."

"It’s interesting because you might not know our language, but even so, you get similar emotions as those who do know it. Also, when you don’t understand a language, you really concentrate on the sounds. For us, words don’t just relate to the language and the images they project; they also relate to the sounds, because the intention you give them is completely linked to how you position your tongue, how loud you sing, or what type of microphone you use."

"Usually it’s more of a collaborative effort. It’s not that this one [Flux] wasn’t, but he took it in directions that I wouldn’t necessarily have gone if I was there at every moment. It’s more of Ryan’s work. It’s something that he fashioned out of his own likings. For me, making a more electronic sounding records was lazier. There's a lot fewer lyrics and there's a lot more repetition. I feel like I cheated."

"Let’s talk about how good that album ['Flux'] is. If you’ve heard me speak about the album any other times, I’ve completely switched my opinion now. My promotions people have talked to me. I love it. Buy it. I love it! Everything is so great! That’s what people want to hear — how wonderful everything is and what a wonderful process it was making the album. They don’t want to hear the truth."

"The work we did in that [Love Spirals Downwards] is pretty timeless. A few years may have passed but I still feel like that possibility is always out there. I get a good feeling when I see an LSD disc out there. It’s still going on in its own way, even if I’m not doing any actual work. For me, Melodyguild is a lovely extension of what I did with Love Spirals Downwards."

"It is an arguable fact that there are three bands whose names are synonymous with the world-renowned Projekt label: Black Tape For A Blue Girl, Lycia and Love Spirals Downwards."

"LSD just might be the burgeoning leader of another full-on ethereal rock revival."

"We later learned it was Susan who originally liked our music. It was Susan who, I guess, really found it and said, 'Oh, listen to this.' I think she pushed Sam into contacting us."

"Suzanne Perry - vocals, lyrics"

"I begin again, As the world outside ends. Dense, even in the still light, To owe you my life. I tell you, Make castles when you want to, And fill them with sights. Stir about the stars, During nights below these tides."

"Were beeth they biforen us weren, And hadden feeld and wode. The wood comes into leaf, Thou might and canst and owe sheld. Therein never havest owest then, Ychabbe y-yerned yore"

"Will you fade now, should I let you? Met with indifference, I remain. So much depends now on this distance, These things escape. Well now I'm too dizzy, I am out of myself. Can you feel it? Too much within yourself. I grow dizzy."

"Your lips are conquerors, Your lips are filled with lies. Lost, lost in what seems, That’s how it should be. Who, who is to see, We write in water, Now."

"Sky's the same as it always was, Nothing we do. So hard to keep anything, When you're expected to. This is the time when water stops, History dies with you. Like rings of trees in sideways forest, Forgetting."

"Stretch stretching, Far beyond this delta between we. Dive, diving, Deep beneath the surface suddenly. All my thoughts are broken. All the words are worn. Can it just be spoken? Can it just be warm?"

"City moon so soon, You’re the world to me. Barely one, Star which hung, Sailing to the sea. And yellow time is overhead, Unchanging things imprinted. Can it all be clear?"