Michigan based blog, Inside The Rift, interviewed Anji for their ‘Metaphysics & Spirituality’ section this month. The feature goes into depth about about vegan lifestyle and her popular YouTube channel Happy Healthy Vegan, as well as her long career in music. Prox also asks what books, music and YouTube channels Anji has been into recently. It’s a fairly lengthy piece, replete with related photos, video, and links. Check it out at InsideTheRift.com.
Prox: What initially sparked your interest in downtempo, jazz, and chill out? How did you decide that this was the type of music that you wanted to create?
Anji: Ryan and I started working on music together in 1999, when he was immersed in the drum n bass scene, but coming out of a long history of making goth-tinged dream pop. I was a college radio DJ at the time, spinning a number of different genres. I’ve always had a voracious appetite for music and love discovering new styles and artists. He and I started exploring all the new types of electronica music being made in the late 90’s, early 2000’s: trip hop, downtempo, deep house, chillout lounge etc etc.
I got really involved in the online music scene, doing streaming radio and then podcasts, and I met a lot of musicians through my endeavors. Here and there I would get involved in musical collaborations online, though a lot of these songs were never properly released, or in some cases, even fully completed to my satisfaction.
Fast forward to 2010… Ryan and I had just released our 4th album as Lovespirals and Ryan suggested we switch gears to a project based on some of these incomplete song ideas of mine. He thought it would be fun to do something lighter than the heavy guitar-based material we had written for ‘Future Past,’ and also wanted to support me as a solo artist, giving me more leeway as a composer, as well as a lyricist. So he selected some of the jazzier and laid backs songs I’d worked on over the prior decade and set about to create or re-create the music for them.
I’m more or less at his mercy with music, as I don’t play any instruments and only know the basics of programming. Were it up to me, I’d be working in more modern genres, like I play on my show, The Chillcast, but I’m not a producer, so I just focus on how I can best contribute lyrically and vocally to any projects I’m invited to work on. My voice lends itself quite well to jazzy and soulful music, but I’m pretty comfortable singing on dream pop, alt country, and retro rock music, too. Ryan and I like to mix genres, so you never know what we’re gonna do next, honestly.
You can also stream a mix by Anji Bee for the Inside the Rift soundcloud account:
