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Love Spirals Downwards
Idylls

Projekt Records

Posted: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

Throughout their eight-year career as Love Spirals Downwards, Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry explored everything from folk to ambient to drum & bass, but it was their debut album that propelled them to the forefront of the ethereal scene. Now remastered by Lum himself and reissued with bonus tracks, Idylls in many ways epitomizes dark ethereal, with plenty of hypnotic guitar strums run through endless layers of effects pedals to cushion Perry's lilting sopranos. Compared to the duo's later material - not to mention Lum's current work in Lovespirals - it's also a lot more gothic than you might expect. Perry's voice on "Forgo" hides a knife edge beneath its softness, for example, and "Stir About the Stars" calls to mind fellow '90s Projekt act Lycia with its funereal drumbeats and brooding bass guitar. More indicative of Lum and Perry's eventual career path are "Ladonna Dissima," with its Latin vocal harmonies and drifting guitar fuzz, and the wonderfully evocative "And the Wood Comes into Leaf," all foggy and bittersweet, muffled naturalistic impressions, and delicate finger-picking. "Love's Labour's Lost" highlights the sheer prettiness of Perry's voice, which also softens the darker keyboard-driven motif of "Dead Language." While Idylls is a far cry from the sort of music Lum is making these days, he's done a fantastic job remastering the album for this edition, and it sounds wonderful. Love Spirals Downwards always had a warmer, less remote vibe than many of their contemporaries, and that shows up particularly on "Scatter January." The faint scratch of fingers moving over the fretboard during chord changes giving things a sense of immediacy that reaches through the layers of reverb; this music is dreamy, but it's by no means sleepy. Finishing up the CD are three bonus tracks. "Mediterranea" is a rarity originally appearing on Projekt's From Across This Grey Land, No. 3 compilation, a languid, melancholy medieval-tinged piece for guitar and voice. A live version of "Scatter January" adds a brooding mood that highlights the band's more overt gothic influences, and an alternate mix of "Love's Labour's Lost" from the Heavenly Voices, Pt. 1 compilation strips down the effects to emphasize the honeyed layers of vocal harmony. Well worth the long wait, this is a near-perfect reissue and should be required listening for ethereal fans.