June 15, 1999 - The Album Leaf and An Orchestrated Rise To Fall

A week after my last release a new band joins my library when The Album Leaf released their debut album "An Orchestrated Rise To Fall" on June 15, 1999. But who is The Album Leaf? Well, it's just one guy! The Album Leaf is a post-rock project of Jimmy LaValle, from San Diego, California, and he plays acoustic guitar, several different keyboards and also uses lots of electronics, including electronic drums. Let's check out some mellow post-rock!

The album begins with "Wander" and it lays the foundation for a typical Album Leaf song with some trippy synths in the background, a light electronic drum beat and some space-y piano that combine for a light and trippy riff. After a bit the speed of the drums picks up and things shift into a faster new riff led by lots of different synths that sound fairly trippy. This main riff goes on for several minutes and LaValle plays some bass in the background that sounds solid and keeps the pace while you're entranced by all the keyboards. An interesting opener for sure! Up next is "An Interview" and there's some voices talking, a man and a woman, but you can't really make out what they're saying. It's just in the background the whole time while LaValle leads the way with a nice acoustic guitar riff. It's just the guitar and the voices the whole two and a half minutes and the guitar is good enough to keep things interesting in this light and slightly strange song. Track 3 is only 37 seconds long and it's called "Lounge Act". It really does sound like lounge or elevator music but LaValle does play some cool piano in this short but interesting little interlude. The next track is "September Song" and LaValle plays some long, droning keyboards in the background and we hear some light guitar and piano doing their own thing overtop. It all combines for a slow main riff but it sounds interesting how these three different parts somehow flow so well together. It's just this main riff for the whole song but it's well done and not too long. Track 5 is "We Once Were (One)" and LaValle leads the way with some pretty good piano and also adds some high and trippy synths to the mix. Together this accounts for this whole four and a half minute song, which is pretty quiet, but the piano sounds good the whole way through even if it's a little repetitive. Up next is "This River Deep" and it comes right in with some loud and epic operatic music that sounds like it's coming from a distant radio. This weird opening fades away fast though as a trippy synth riff takes over and LaValle plays some nice piano to go along with it. At least a couple more keyboard parts also come into play and there's a lot going on in this quietly trippy track. It's short, but it's interesting for sure and I almost want this one to be longer! Track 7 is "Airplane" and we hear some more talking in the background but this time you can make out some of what they're saying as it sounds like a man and a woman talking for the first time on an airplane. LaValle comes in with a slow but solid guitar riff and we hear some keyboards that sound like strings that give things a pretty epic feel. Along with the guitar things sound pretty beautiful actually, though it might get a little repetitive since the song is almost five minutes. The next track is "A Short Story" and it is the exact opposite of that, it's a near twenty minute song! It opens quietly as one by one we hear more and more noises and sounds, including a light guitar riff, lots of different keyboards (including some music box-esque stuff) and some bell-like percussion as well. This all combines for a whiet and slow main riff with the guitar keeping the pace while the other noises do their thing in the background. The main guitar riff gets pretty repetitive, but the keyboards keep ebbing and flowing and they keep things interesting. Eventually a drum beat forms that isn't anything special but I find it does add to the riff as things get louder and it seems like constant waves of keyboards keep washing over. Things flow pretty consistently right up until about fourteen minutes in, when the main riff finally fades to a close and all we hear now is the music box-esque keyboards and bell noises as LaValle just continues to play and play for several more minutes! It's nothing amazing, and it goes on for way too long, but it's interesting and very post-rock. After nearly twenty minutes we reach track 9 "We Once Were (Two)" and this is driven by the same cool keyboard riff as part one, but this version is much more involved. Part one had just two keyboard parts, this one has those same two parts, but also even more synths and a decent electronic drum beat. There's some trippy keyboards that sway in the background overtop of everything else and I like part two way better for sure. The final song on the album is "Lounge Act (Two)" and it seems Jimmy like the 37 second song so much that he took the same main riff and made a full three-plus minute sing with it! It is a pretty cool lead keyboard part and he plays some nice fast stuff overtop of the lower backing piano and the lounge-y electronic drums. Out of nowhere we hear some really distorted vocals that are high and difficult to understand and they add another trippy layer to things while Jimmy plays some pretty cool piano.

That is the end of "An Orchestrated Rise To Fall" and it is certainly unlike any other album in my library so far. This quiet and very electronic music is not normally my thing, but I do like this album! It's strange and trippy and beautiful at times and it's a rough foundation for Jimmy LaValle. I look forward to to seeing where things go from here!