While their sound has evolved from their debut, their first effort still features some of their best tunes. The overall sound of the album is heavenly and reverberant, and there's also a greater degree of layering than subsequent works, with highly processed acoustic and electric guitars coalescing gracefully around Perry's angelic vox, Lum's heavenly keyboards, and occasional hand percussion and rhythm programming. Idylls also includes some beautiful cover artwork. -- Bryan Reesman

Sailing on a gossamer sheen, swaying like a leaf lightly transversing the airwaves, Love Spirals Downwards unleashes achingly sweet melodies, led by the siren voice of Suzanne Perry, and tucked in a bed of soft ambient atmospherics and bittersweet acoustic strumming. Haunting like an unshakable dream, this proves itself to be rather affecting mood music.

Swirling, swaying layers of atmospheric music and female vocals coat Love Spirals Downwards. Idylls is almost ambient at times, wandering about in your head like an echo of the sad past.

The re-release of Idylls and Ardor close to fifteen years later shows how these beloved albums have stood the test of time. And even altered the course of the genre so that many new ethereal/shoegazer bands are now compared to Love Spirals Downwards rather than the Cocteau Twins, to whom they bear only little resemblance after all. Idylls was nearly perfect the first time, with crisp bright guitars, soaring effects, and the captivating voice of Suzanne Perry, but musician Ryan Lum applied the polish of remastering to make it shine still brighter. The new version also includes one of the band's best, "Mediterranea." Ardor is more painterly, warmer but more melancholy, with the lovely song "Write in Water" in both studio and live versions. - Carolee

One of the songs that really stuck out for me on Projekt200 was Love Spirals Downwards's "Write in Water." Upon giving it a few listens I came to the conclusion that I needed more Love Spirals Downwards in my life. Perhaps someone at Projekt was reading my mind, because a few months later the label reissued the group's first two albums, Ardor and Idylls. Both feature lush, ethereal arrangements of guitar, keyboards, and programming from multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lum and the all-encompassing, heavenly vocals of Suzanne Perry. While both albums work the same style, each has its own unique flavor; as such, it's impossible to pick a favorite between them. Beautifully remastered and laden with bonus tracks, Idylls and Ardor are essential additions to your rainy day musical rotation. -Jack

This is in the Projekt sale at present and available as a bit of bargain. An interesting record, this was originally released in 1992 since when it’s sold over 15,000 copies which is pretty hefty business for a proto-Ethereal band. It’s got that New Agey mystery holiday vibe to it, with vocals drenched and instruments rotating between light and discreet, heady with pain and who-knows-what (technical term), just like Ethereal bands of today. What was then is now, in reality, but the good thing is nothing sounds old, or out of place, and the vibrant beauty works.

‘Illusory Me‘ is like a touchy-feely dawn as the sour traces of ‘Scatter January’ makes for a touchy twilight. ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ is all coy and soft, the vocals like doe-eyed clouds across the shyly smiling guitar. Too soft for this chap, I have to confess, mainly because a lot of the more luscious, janglier forms of Ethereal always light a possible road back to the Cocteaus, and I was never a great fan. A band best left buried with that whimsical, nonsensical singing, others followed in their wake summoning vocal stylings and imagined vocabularies from the compliant ether. Love Spiral Downwards do it very well, and the variety on this record will probably work for Indie Ethereal fans more than Goth Ethereal, which may be why they’ve fared so well.

‘This Endris Night’ is charming, as is much of this, but when it swiftly becomes happy background music swirliness it’s also a bit hippyish, for people who like their ethereal happy, more often that not. The label also suggest it’s shoegazey, which may be true, although UK shoegazing usually involved compressed blood and slender thunder. Shoegazing with Indie moving away from the stumbling noise of the Marychain, or the stupor of MBV into something more upright. Well, ‘Forgo’ is all high and intriguing, ‘Eudaimonia’ sleepy as a walrus in a deckchair, ‘Dead Language’ a bit fizzier, with the ghost of a bass and some percussive emphasis. ‘Stir About the Stars’ has a real spectral splendour, the vocals suspended and rarefied, with ‘Noumena of Spirit’ solemn and dignified, ‘Ladonna Dissima’ all-enveloping and artistic with guitar plumes and a steadfast vocal presence.

‘Drops, Rain, and Sea’ comes over like some aimless but pretty indiepop, ‘Waiting for the Sunrise’ glitter-dusted ambient, ‘And the Wood Comes Into Leaf’ flossy and floaty, which then leaves the bonus tracks. The subtly prancing ‘Mediterranea’ originally featured on a 1992 comp, with ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ (Heavenly Voices Mix) on another in 1993. Sandwiched between them is a delightful live version of ‘Scatter January’ from 1996, and a pretty impressive record draws to a close.

I have no idea what the remastering process involves and how anything has been changed, upgraded, improved or emphasised, but LSD (!) certainly went thoughtfully into the night and can stir the blood, when not brushing your hair for you. I’ll have the remastered ‘Ardor’ over the weekend.

Sumptuous acoustics, beautiful female voice, and sweet harmony rising to glorious heights. Thirteen angelic tracks tripping through peaceful illusions and fantasies, only briefly accessible in dreamsoaked memories. -Jules

From the early formative years of Love Spirals Downward to their current incarnation, with name shortened to Lovespirals, the band has shape-shifted from a 4AD ethereal sound with thick, cottony soundscapes to complement the hypnotic, angelic vocals of Suzanne Perry to a more current smorgasbord of legendary influences such as blues and jazz, completed by the chameleonic voice of Anji Bee. The two versions of the same band have covered a lot of ground in their separate time-frames, both having added copiously to the band’s legacy.

Idylls, the band’s debut release on Projekt Records, was released in 1992, just as the ethereal dream-pop movement began to kick into high gear. It begins with echoed vocals layered over a soft bed of otherworldly melodies crafted from the mind of Ryan Lum in the lead-off track, “Illusory Me.” That track sets the tone for the rest of the album. With Lum’s use of gorgeously sculpted sound imageries utilizing acoustic guitars, rhythmic bass and percussion, keyboards, and electric guitar, and highlighted by the airy voice of Perry, the album’s music allowed one to soar into the spaces of their minds effortlessly. It is atmospheric, alluring, intriguing, and beautiful. Influentially, you’ll hear musical strains of Cocteau Twins (“Eudaimonia,” others), OMD (“Stir about the Stars”), and others as you move through the album’s 13 tracks (now 16).

On the reissued version of this album, there are 3 added bonus tracks. “Mediterranea,” originally heard on the Projekt retrospective (Temporal – 2000) for Love Spirals Downward is the first of the bonus tracks, and is a delightful add. The other tracks are a live version of “Scatter January,” here a softer, less effective version of the procession-like song found on this album in the original listing; and a Heavenly Voices remix of the siren-song, “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

Ardor, released by Projekt Records in 1994, represents a definite change in sound, even if the core of the music remains. Ryan Lum was masterful in that he was able to introduce change while using a perfectly acceptable and familiar base of sound that endeared fans to their style of music. Ardor represented a turn of the screw adjustment in their ethereal style, reducing the ultra-dreamy aspects and introducing a more majestic component better using and thus enhancing Perry’s angelic vocals. Listen to “Avincenna,” and you get a feel for the grandeur of a Celtic song, or even for the richness of a Dead Can Dance song. Ryan Lum wisely advanced his musical art by steps as he prepared for the band’s next album, Ever.

The bonus inclusions for Ardor are “Oisin and Niam,” an unused outtake from the Ardor Sessions, an instrumental mix of the album’s “I Could Find It Only by Chance,” but named here as “I Could Find It,” and a live version of the album’s original of “Write in Water.” “Oisin and Niam” is a brilliant instrumental song that makes me somewhat sad that it was not included on the original album. It has a spirit all its own that makes it a special song; I’m quite happy to see its resurrection here, where it belongs. The instrumental mix of “I Could Find It” is inherently the same but with stripped-out vocals from the original “I Could Find It Only by Chance” making this a very interesting take on the song. The final bonus track is an endearing live acoustic rendition of “Write in Water.”

The remastering of the albums’ music is exceptional. Even the artwork on the single-fold glossy digipak packaging appears to be more striking. Overall, the reissue of both Idylls and Ardor more than merit their reacquisition. Fans of shoegazer dream-pop will be rewarded. If you’re uninitiated in the works of Love Spirals Downward and Lovespirals (the 2nd incarnation of the band featuring mainstay Ryan Lum, and introducing the many vocal nuances of Anji Bee), and you like the dreamy ethereal music of the ‘90s especially music that is slightly reminiscent of Cocteau Twins, then these two Love Spirals Downward albums reissues will greatly satisfy. -Matt Rowe

Lovely this. It all flows together like a dream of some long, sundrenched afternoon with a cool breeze now and then wafting through. It makes one think of gathering flowers or slipping into the shadow.

Now some might dismiss this band, saying they're too twee, without any substance, and too much 4AD-inspired ethereal formlessness. But thats's just the point of Love Spirals Downwards, why vocalist Suzanne Perry's lyrics are just word forms, not to be readily understood.

Love Spirals Downwards deals in gentle hints of feeling. They don't want to pin down any specific idea with their songs. They are two people creating this dreamlike stuff, and it affects the atmosphere of the album so thats it's insular and isolated from current musical trends. Love Spirals Downwards have created their own world.

As already mentioned, Suzanne Perry is the vocalist, with pipes sweet and clear. On " Love's Labour's Lost" she sounds as achingly pure as Karin Oliver from His Name is Alive. At other times, with an Eastern flavored drum pattern surging through songs like "Scattered January," "Forgo, and "Dead Language", she has a haunting sound reminiscent of Lisa Gerrerd's primal voice in Dead Can Dance. Ryan Lum is the other member of the band and he professed admiration for the likes of early 4AD material from the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. It's there in his instrumentation-gentle Cocteau jangles in songs like "Eudaimonia," and "Drops Rain, and Sea." Eastern rhythms and mystic song titles - " Noumena of Spirit," "This Endris Night" - permeates this album.

But what truly makes this album is the studio smarts exhibited by the band. Ryan and Suzanne produce the album themselves, knowing only they could understand the kind of music they wanted to create. Love Spirals Downwards are not really a live band, because much of the magic is created in the studio. Idylls is an album to simply listen to, one that will help you escape. Ryan denies any drug reference associated with the initials of their name. He said in an interview that they thought the name had a nice ring to it, and that was all. So take their album as it is, without too much anaylsis. It is meant to be enjoyed, as something outside of time.

You can barely shoe horn all the lush/Lush, curvy/Curve-y swirl-music bands into a tour bus these days. Does the scene have enough room behind the Catherine Wheel for Cocteau Quada? Or will Love Spiral Downwards have to ride in the U-Haul? Love Spirals Downward is a duo (Ryan Lum on instruments, Suzzanne Perry on vocals), whose debut on Projekt Records, Idylls, swims on waves of guitars and airy, otherworldly vocals. And your meant to feel the lyrics, not understand them; as Lum puts it, " We really don't want to say a whole lot as far as the semantics or messages go. We're more involved in the overall aesthetic picture, which is not necessarily determined by words and meaning and such." While you'll hear a hint of Indo-British singer Sheila Chandra on Idylls, LSD's most obvious influence is the Cocteau Twins. Lum admits that he and Perry were influenced by "mid eighties 4AD bands" like the Twins and This Moral Coil, but good naturely rejects the comparison. "I really don't think we sound like them, to be completely honest. I'm not in denial or self-deception," he volunteers reassuringly. "It's my honest belief that if you listen to our music, we don't sound like the Cocteau Twins." Well, okay, LSD does favor evocative vocalizations (Ah-h-ah-ah-h-h-h", that sort of thing) over the nonsense syllables of the Cocteau Twins; Lum and Perry's fondness for Indian classical music give Idylls a cosmopolitan sound, making it just right far, say, having Captain Picard over for a cup of Earl Grey, hot. And Lum is not bothered if people use Idylls as background music. "For gluing airplanes together it might not be good, he says, " but if your drinking tea, hanging out or whatever, that's fine." All he asks is that you give it a "a good listen" - Joe Clark

Finally back in print again, Love Spirals Downwards' debut album helped define the ethereal goth sound.

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. -Matthew Johnson

“Idylls” is the 2nd album from the American duet to benefit from a complete remastering and is clearly presenting a more mature band. The effects and strong reverbs that where a bit too present on “Ardor” have been slowly reduced and have given birth to a clearer and more precise sound. While “Ardor” was going into one direction, “Idylls” is obviously more varied and present a richer and multi-coloured instrumentation. A mix between acoustic guitars but also more ethnical and/or medieval instruments or song constructions help them define their style and create some brilliant cuts. In this aspect they sometimes get closer to bands such as Dead Can Dance for instance. The vocals are also more self-confident and contribute in creating a magical and enchanting universe. Songs like “Love’s Labour’s Lost” or “Dead Language” are good examples of their ability and could not be avoided on this interesting album. (CF:8)CF

The open ended, airy guitars and equally angelic vocals recall both the Cocteaus and All About Eve, and these 13 slices of cloud-like beauty are haunting and innocent. -Paul Semel