After answering Rik’s interview questions, I ended up slimming down my reply to his first question because it was so long. Thought I would go ahead and share it here, though, for anyone who is interested in learning more about my musical timeline.
You divide your time between a few projects, Lovespirals and Delphinium being the most visible. How does this affect the way you write?
Actually, it’s been a lot more complicated than that! Delphinium really began in the very early 90s as me collaborating with Ravensong (whom I still need to put up on Mp3.com…), until it morphed into a new project called Datura. Before Datura released anything (aside from a cassette demo), we found out another band was using the same name, so we hunted around for a new one, and came up with Delphinium. But before Delphinium really took off, Justin and I got sidetracked by another project with some friends of ours, called Ain Soph Aur. It was an improv experimental band that attempted to combine mystical traditions and music, and we got so caught up with it that Datura/Delphinium was totally forgotten!
After about a year with Ain Soph Aur, I started jamming with fellow KUCI DJ’s, doing various live and recorded improv sessions, until I ended up collaborating pretty heavily as a duet with home taper, Jake Anderson, called Celesteville. We were doing lo-fi pop stuff, with both of us switching between a ton of instruments; I played some guitar, accordion, sampler, all kinds of percussion and toys…. it was fun. I think I needed something light after that ASA experience, and I had needed both improv situations after the heavy studio time with Delphinium. I like a blend of programmed, carefully crafted music, and spontaneous performance, too much of either is a drag, musically. That’s what I learned from all that experimentation.
Now, enter Ryan Lum! After all the insanity of live improv and 4-track cassette recording, I was pretty excited to be lucky enough to get involved with a professional recording outfit, such as Love Spirals. It can be terribly frustrating having your efforts practically thrown away for over a year, which is how I came to feel, looking back on my time with Ain Soph Aur and Celesteville. I was more than ready to settle down, write some real songs, perfect the vocals and just get really into the recording process. Unfortunately, Ryan has been overwhelmed by problems with his studio setup most of the time we’ve been together! His computer died twice, causing him to lose precious data, and he’s had a lot of problems getting his software to work correctly ever since. We haven’t actually gotten to do much work together yet, even though we’ve been together 2 years.
Meanwhile, I kept writing songs, either tucking the lyrics away in my diary, or recording the vocal melodies to cassette. Through the Internet, I started meeting various musicians, and collaborated with a few of them. I guess music is kinda like breathing for me, it’s something that I have to do in order to live, you know? I go nuts if I’m not working on something music related! It doesn’t always have to be singing, but I was so primed to work with Lovespirals last year, that I had to divert some of that energy somewhere or I was going to crack. So what happened is that I recorded with 3 different bands over 2000, all very different from one another. I did some Gothic-tinged electronica and darkwave with a band called Voiceless, experimental Drum ‘n’ Bass and Down Tempo with Aslan’s, and then some poppy Trip Hop and Drum ‘n’ Bass with Dreamzone 51. I was more or less doing all the projects simultaneously, just grooving off whatever music the different musicians would send me. Sometimes I’d use songs or poems that I had been saving for Lovespirals, but other times I’d just do something spontaneous based on their compositions, often using the working song title for lyrical inspiration. It was a crazy, creative time! I began to spread myself a little thin, so I told everyone that I had to back off and focus in on Lovespirals.