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PHOTO CREDIT: ZEV SCHMITZ

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Today, Los Angeles-based electronic artist The Album Leaf shares FUTURE FALLING, his first original body of work, not including his numerous notable film scores and re-issues, since his acclaimed 2016 album Between Waves. The record features collaborations with indie artists Kimbra and Bat For Lashes.

To accompany the release, he shares the short film “Prologue to Epilogue: One Act Leads to Another,” featuring the tracks “Prologue” and “Epilogue.” The film was directed by his partner Kate Trumbull-LaValle, a Peabody award-winning filmmaker, and was conceived and filmed in collaboration with cinematographer Helki Frantzen and edited by Helena Rodriguez. The film is a patient, visual meditation on the themes of grief, loss, isolation, connection, memory, family, and love inspired by and set to the first and last songs on the new record. It features friends and family who have lost and loved. Kate adds, “Water becomes the connective tissue that binds these images together. Water like grief can overwhelm us, and water like love, reminds us to breathe.”

LaValle explains, “I didn’t want a conventional music video. Kate and I talked about collaborating on a video that included more than one song, and her idea to create a contemplative piece filmed underwater about grief and love spoke to me. I’ve lost many friends since making this record, and the imagery of suffocation and release invites me to sit with all those complicated feelings. And it also shines a light on how important my family and loved ones are.”

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About FUTURE FALLING and THE ALBUM LEAF:

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.

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FUTURE FALLING
Tracklist

1. Prologue
2. Dust Collects
3. Afterglow Feat. Kimbra
4. Breathe
5. Future Falling
6. Cycles
7. Give in
8. Stride
9. Near Feat. Bat For Lashes
10. Epilogue

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Follow THE ALBUM LEAF
Website – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram 

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AMNPLIFY – DB