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2LP
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EGR 26015LP
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The Album Leaf shares his new ambient LP, Rotations. The record is a mediative experiment into atmospheric sound. Creator Jimmy LaValle explains, "This collection of music is a true reflection of my creative process -- rooted in sound exploration, experimentation, and spontaneous response. Each track captures a moment of creative discovery, free from the pressure of achieving a polished result. Throughout my career, I've often placed significant weight on what an album should be. With this release, I've let go of those expectations to share a body of work that feels genuine and authentic." The Album Leaf began as the solo project of Jimmy LaValle, who came up in the San Diego music scene playing in hardcore bands and the instrumental rock band Tristeza. He had inked a deal to release his next solo album through the indie label Tigerstyle Records, so he put the modest advance towards a self-recording starter setup, building out the sound with occasional studio access. The music that emerged -- vivid, rhythmic, soaring instrumentals guided by lines of guitar and Rhodes -- not only set the path for The Album Leaf over the next two decades of acclaimed releases (for Sub Pop, City Slang, and others), it became a touchstone for the next generation's wave of melodic and meditative electro-organic music. Featuring Six Missing.
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2LP
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EGR 626014LP
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Jimmy LaValle's The Album Leaf has spun from solo outlet to full band and back in its nearly 25 years. His acclaimed catalog spans releases for labels such as Sub Pop, City Slang, Relapse, and others. He also composes music for film and television, scoring over 20 projects since 2009. The cinematic sensibilities of The Album Leaf were present from the beginning. His 1999 debut introduced the start of a signature sound: melodic and meditative electro-organic soundscapes constructed with guitar, percussion, Rhodes, and field recordings. His seventh full-length LP, and first since 2016, arrives in 2023 via Vancouver's Nettwerk Records. Future Falling finds LaValle working with an array of musicians, shaping slightly darker, more spacious, and synth-driven songs with contributions from Bat For Lashes, Kimbra, and many others. The music registers a shade darker and more synth-driven than most moments in his acclaimed catalog, a bridge between shadowy, cerebral terrain and dreamy precision pop, where softly percussive frameworks meet shimmering sound design and emotive instrumentation. LaValle sees the construction of Future Falling as less conventional than past work. Contributions were done remotely with a "throw everything at it" mindset, making LaValle the arranger of layers from all over: drums, synths, horns, violins, voice, and more. The album opens on "Prologue," an evocative, slow-building instrumental that rides a pattern into a symphonic sea of static. Keys and horns glide atop the rhythmic pulse of "Dust Collects," setting the contemplative scene for "Afterglow," the record's most pop-minded performance. Here Kimbra, the Grammy-winning New Zealand singer-songwriter, renders a striking recollection of past love as percussive elements shimmer and swirl. A plaintive piano line moves throughout "Cycles 19.9" encircled by light ambient washes, both a valley between two peaks and a powerful composition in its own right. "Future Falling" follows; with origins tracing back to 2015, the track embodies the full sonic journey LaValle has taken. All the hallmarks of The Album Leaf -- melodic builds, vivid sprawl, tonal shape-shifting -- assemble to a blissful finish. For the next stretch, "Cycles" begins with an uneasy Rhodes loop that builds and erupts into a wall of texture paving its way into "Give In," where LaValle models a movement that begins subtle and measured before curving up with skyward, percussive bursts ("Stride") and settling back down to the album's back-half centerpiece, "Near" featuring the acclaimed English artist Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes. "Do you feel me near?" she sings into a mist of widescreen synths and soothing, distant drum beats as if searching through the dark. Neon violet vinyl; gatefold jacket.
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