Albums by this artist

One Day I'll Be On Time (2001)

An Orchestral Rise To Fall (2000)

The Album Leaf

An Orchestral Rise To Fall

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» JONATHAN COHEN | SENIOR EDITOR

The Album Leaf An Orchestral Rise To Fall The Music Fellowship, 2000 RiYL: Tristeza, Pele

The Album Leaf is the solo project of Tristeza's Jimmy LaVelle, and on An Orchestral Rise To Fall, LaVelle concentrates on the dreamier side of his main gig's sound. However, Tristeza's music is at its most distinct when it keeps the pace peppy. When things slow down, the band gets tripped up in repetition and the ambience better harnessed by acts such as Tortoise or Pell Mell.

Hence the main difficulty with An Orchestral Rise To Fall: the album is simply too low-key to hold the listener's attention. At 51 minutes, this offering could probably have been cut in half to make a nice EP (although Tristeza's "Insound Tour Support" EP included one song that ran past 40 minutes by itself!). Opener "Wander" is really cool, with its drum'n'bass foundation and ear-pleasing electronics. But the rest of the disc aspires to little more than background music, rendering it largely inessential.

JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"