Alexandra Love: It's like it's part of the same expression just because we're always expressing where we are in our lives, but it's a different part of the same expression. If the first record was one place then this new one would be like the bridge that’s leading to the next place.
DiViNCi: While there was very little time in between them, each definitely captured a moment productivity together—like and where we are at. And the second one totally has its own sound. They're slightly different from each other but they live in the same universe.
matthew warhol: Could you put those differences in words… or even feelings?
Alexandra Love: For me, Love Is At The Core is about being in this new comfortable place of like awareness and self-expression. And then The Cope Aesthetic is more about venturing out of our comfort zones and how learning to cope with things can have a beauty to it. But it's also got more tension to it. So Love Is At The Core is definitely more subtle, andThe Cope Aesthetic is sort of reaching into this new place and trying to illustrate the beauty in our journey.
DiViNCi: Sonically they differ a little too. Love Is At The Core there's a little bit more electronic elements and, dare I say, a little bit more trap elements. Then The Cope Aesthetic its a lot more jazzy. It’s Jazz, but it has a mature sound to it too that we both didn’t purposely engineer.
matthew warhol: With those kind of more, for lack of a better term, natural elements, Alex, for you writing on top of that does it pull different emotions out of you?
Alexandra Love: Yeah, for some of them it was like just a piano or just a loop of piano for five minutes. And I record to it and then I give it back to him and then he would engineer around it. It’s a beautifully independent comma co-creative process.
DiViNCi: That process was something we did for both albums. The song “Love Is At The Core” is literally a two bar piano loop that I made in 2011. She heard it, and I always liked it just the way it was, and when she heard it, she said, “Ooo, I really like that.” But if I showed that to anybody else they would be like, “Are you going to do anything else to it?” She wanted it just like that. And when she recorded to it, exactly as you hear her vocals on there, it’s exactly how she recorded to the track when it was just the piano loop. And I took that and put drums to it, put bass to it, put everything around it. I like that process so much because I always felt compelled to get an idea out and just stop. That’s how I would describe the consistent approach to this material, get the things that feel like the embodiment of the mood.