The Album Leaf announces first album in seven years with Bat For Lashes collaboration "Near"

"Near" featuring Bat For Lashes is the third preview of The Album Leaf's FUTURE FALLING album, following last month's "Breathe" and the album title-track that arrived in October last year.

The Album Leaf, real name Jimmy LaValle, says of the collaboration, "I had sent Natasha a song I was working on to see if she’d be up collaborating. We spent an afternoon in my studio while she sang a handful of ideas over the piece. I took those ideas and created something new inspired by her vocal. I really wanted to create something to support the dreamlike narrative she was painting. It was all very natural."

Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan adds, "We worked organically, I was building vocals over Jimmy’s music; playing with melodies and words... he then took it away and sculpted it into what became "Near". The imagery was of going deep into a dark forest with a small glimmer of safety, something precious and secret. Sort of an ambient fairytale. It was very spontaneous and fun to improvise."

FUTURE FALLING will follow his 2016 studio album Between Waves. Since then he's released numerous film soundtracks - The Endless, Synchronic and Something in the Dirt - as well as 2021's One Day XX reissue.

LaValle says, "During the pandemic, I created new music almost daily. I had amassed a daunting amount of new material that I felt connected with, that it almost acted more like a road block. I experimented with a lot of audio manipulating, learning new tricks and staying true to my love of analogue synthesizers. I finally settled on a collection of songs, and after second-guessing all of them, I reached out to multiple friends and collaborators to contribute. With those contributions, I was able to craft a record that represents both the time I spend alone discovering and creating while keeping the collaborative spirit that I have always been inspired by."

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