It seems fitting to begin a review of My Heart Is Love, the latest release from our own adopted Baltimore heroes Aligning Minds with a quote from another Baltimore hero, Frank Zappa. Though he’s usually quoted as saying “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible,” and that may do a fine job of summing up his point, that’s not actually what he said. Here’s the real quote, with a link to Zappa saying it:
I’m mentioning that because pioneering spirit runs in at least two directions, and it’s possible to make that case that the quiet revolutions, the ones not characterized by the use of force but through the application of peace, based on single ideas, are often, when viewed through indefatigable lens of history, the significantly more powerful and lasting.
Aligning Minds are some of your fellow men.
Let me start off with a few caveats: My Heart Is Love shouldn’t be listened to in a car. I mean, okay, sure, it *can* be, but really it shouldn’t. Here’s why: Half of the beauty of this child is in the dynamic range utilized by this duo. Let’s face it: There’s not a
tremendous amount of dynamic range in just about anything today. If you obtain the mp3 version of this album and listen to it in a car, you are already starting at a disadvantage. This is an album made for LISTENING – and what I mean by that is this: This is not wallpaper music.
Now, in saying that I’m not aiming to disparage anyone or anything… except maybe that Like a G6 song (but I admit that even that has a certain genius to it in its brilliant “make the whole song the chorus” way… but I digress)
This is an aural confection best sampled through headphones, or in a quiet room with decent speakers. I say this as someone who generally doesn’t have music “on” unless I’m actively listening to it. If you don’t give it the attention of the part of your mind that listens and appreciates, you may still enjoy it, but you won’t *get* it. This is music to STFU to. (and I mean that in the best possible way)
Wrapped in a diaphanous gauze of subtle, melancholic, and perhaps somewhat unintentionally timbral nostalgia, (for me anyway) the new Aligning Minds album My Heart Is Love is a rich, varied, warm, and multi-dimensional blanket of sounds gently wiping away the excesses of a harrowing world like a thoughtful tide, slowly, inexorably bringing the oceanic possibilities of life, love and peace to a barren shore.
There’s something of everything here, and something for everyone. It is, rather agreeably, a lot like Baltimore weather: If you don’t like what you’re hearing, wait a few minutes.
This is actually a fantastic and wonderful thing.
There’s glitchy stuff and dubby stuff and dubsteppy sounds and brief moments of obstreperous “hardcore synth on synth action.” But there’s also a suave sense of melody, a deep appreciation of bass, a delight in sounds old and new.
The production is lovely, crisp, multivariate. This music is unclassifiable, but I’ll try this:
If dustup… I mean Dubstep®(!) was given Valium® (I’d say a consonant or a vowel, or “lived in Colorado or Washington” instead, but that’s not quite right… you get the idea), and downtempo was given Ritalin® (see aside above but use your own allusion) and then that precocious child was pushed, gently over the threshold of the event horizon into an alternate universe of sound, feeling and emotion, you’d be in the parking lot of this album… which is still very different from being inside the stadium.
I leave you with this. Two more quotes. This one attributed to LOTS of people: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”
And this one from Weeping Willow (featuring Born Infinite)
“All that we are
all that we see
is an illusion to me
what it looks like
what it seems
what it feels like
what it means”
See what it means for yourself. Unless things have changed you can pay whatever you think is appropriate for the album (in SCADS of formats) here: 😯
