New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Tomorrow, Los Angeles-based electronic artist The Album Leaf shares the final single, "Prologue," from his forthcoming LP, FUTURE FALLING, out May 5th. When asked about the cinematically experimental ambient-electronic track, visionary Jimmy LaValle comments, "Prologue is a new beginning. The tonal idea started with an unused noise pad I made for a film I was working on and paired with a simple Buchla loop.
There isn't much to prologue with instrumentation, but the musical journey weaves us through chaos culminating in some sort of peace. The irony of this is I wrote this song on March 5th, 2020. One week before we shut down. Some sort of premonition of what was to come."
FUTURE FALLING will be his first original body of work, not including his numerous notable film scores and re-issues, since his acclaimed 2016 album Between Waves, and features artists like
Kimbra and Bat For Lashes.
For the past seven years, the prolific Jimmy LaValle put his primary focus on the tight deadlines that came with scoring films and collaborations with apps like Calm, allowing the loose concept of the "next record" to stretch on with over two hundred demos written and dozens of album ideas before the ten final tracks that comprise, FUTURE FALLING, finally stood out to him. A fluid, cohesive, and definitive set, the record exhibits LaValle as emblematically inquisitive and renewed by outside perspectives.
A desire for innovation, and the necessity of the pandemic, forced many of the collaborations to be done remotely, making LaValle the arranger of layers from all over: drums, synths, horns, violins, voice, and more.
Without the in-the-room dynamics, he had more time to experiment, adding and subtracting ad infinitum with LaValle's signature Rhodes taking a back seat to the synths, effects pedals, and other analog-sourced electronics. With various machines, including the Novation Peak and Moog DFAM, as his engine, LaValle routes the sounds in and out, re-sampling and manipulating drums and tones to achieve the shapes his mind's eye was seeing.
"There's a lot more exploration, out of the box; I've found a really good balance in creating music organically and analog, utilizing digital tools to tweak the source further." The result, mixed by Joshua Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv), is a masterful exercise in pacing; the music meanders, pulses, and arcs in a way that arrests attention.
The Album Leaf has been steadily making his mark as a soft-spoken innovator since 1999. Now based in LA, Jimmy LaValle started out in the San
Diego music scene creating vivid, rhythmic, soaring instrumentals centered around the Rhodes piano. With over two decades of acclaimed releases (for Sub Pop, City Slang, and others), countless film scores, and numerous collaborations with artists and brands, he has become a touchstone for the next generation's wave of melodic and meditative electro-organic music.
Jimmy LaValle's own imprint - EASTERN GLOW RECORDINGS, will release FUTURE FALLING as a double LP, pressed on Neon Violet Vinyl in a gatefold package designed by The Album Leaf's longtime art designer, Alex Deamon. Now available for preorder via The Album Leaf's Bandcamp page.
To support his upcoming record, The Album Leaf will headline a North American tour that launches in San
Diego on May 13th and includes stops in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New York, before wrapping in Los Angeles on June 9th. A full list of dates is below.
THE ALBUM LEAF HEADLINE TOUR DATES:
5/13 - San Diego, US-CA | Casbah
5/16 - Seattle, US-WA |
Madame Lou's
5/17 - Portland, US-OR | Mission Theatre
5/19 - San Jose, US-CA | The Ritz
5/20 - San Francisco, US-CA | The Independent
6/1 - Chicago, US-IL | Lincoln Hall
6/2 - Boston, US-MA | Arts at the Armory
6/3 - New York, US-NY | Brooklyn Made
6/9 - Los Angeles, US-CA | Lodge Room
