LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS: Ever

Love Spirals Downwards

Ever

© 1996 Ryan Lum (BMI) (617026007120)

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Ethereal female vocals combine with lush guitar textures, ambient electronic grooves and folk-inspired melodies to a poignant, bittersweet, but beautifully exalted effect.

notes

Love Spirals Downwards are the unconscious mind of ethereal music, evoking forgotten memories with subjective, alien tongues. The sounds drift dreamily through one's thoughts like incense permeates the air -- perhaps the spicy fragrance will seduce you like a lover to its heat, or else it will elude the threshold of perception and weave itself into the mind's strata of buried experiences...

Ever diversified Love Spirals Downwards' previously established ethereal rock style, bringing ambient electronic grooves into their mix of folk inspired melodies, lush guitar textures, and heavenly female vocals. The product of subtly shifting band dynamics, Ever is a definite departure from past albums, composed of an unexpected blend of subtly dancy pop and stripped down, bittersweet acoustic ballads distilled to the very essence of Love Spirals Downwards' uniquely sumptuous sound.

Left more to his own devices than with past releases, multi-instrumentalist/producer, Ryan Lum, experimented with new musical technologies on this third album, often sampling and looping vocal passages, as with the catchy and sensual "Madras" and the hauntingly sad "Promises." The 6 tracks with full vocals are a mix of Suzanne Perry's trademark nonsense wordplay (Lieberflusse, Above the Lone) and some of her more heartbreaking lyrical work ever (Delta, Last Classic). Presented with much less effect processing that past releases - as well as fewer harmony layers - Perry seems more fragile, earthy, and intimate, as in the band's live performances.

Over their 8 year history, Love Spirals Downwards released 4 albums; Idylls (1992), Ardor (1994), Ever (1996), and Flux (1998), 1 single, Sideways Forest (1996), and 1 retrospective collection Temporal (2000), incorporating the styles of ethereal rock, world music, ambient/new age, and electronica to create a sound uniquely their own.

Comparisons have been made by critics to Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Mojave 3, His Name is Alive, Cranes, and The Sundays.

reviews

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  • Slow and sensual
    author: John Davis

    This album is a nice balance of slow-turning melodies and driving syncopated rhythms.

  • Love Spirals Downwards brings ethereal to a deeper realm.
    author: Industrial Nation

    As beautiful as ever, Love Spirals Downwards astonishes us with another perfect, flowing CD. 'Ever' combines Suzanne Perry's exquisite voice with Ryan Lum's melodic guitar as aptly as before. They have proved live and on CD they don't need much more than her angelic voice and his guitar. A very serene piece of art, 'Ever's songs just swirl with each other. Every one of Love Spirals Downwards' songs is beautiful and independent on its own; yet every title fits exactly together. A tad different than their previous releases, 'Ever' is by far one of Projekt's best releases. This CD along with any other of Love Spirals Downwards' releases are highly recommended.

  • Beautiful beyond reason
    author: M. Tye Comer, CMJ

    Ever... is an achingly beautiful, enchanting maelstrom of emotion that fuses honey-dripped vocals, delicate guitars and electronic backdrops of sedate, swirling synthesizers, effectively capturing what Halstead and Goswell missed in their transition. Slow, somber, and beautiful beyond reason, this LSD just might be the burgeoning leader of another full-on ethereal rock revival.

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