The Album Leaf Shares New Single Feat. Aisha Badru; LA, SD & Japanese Tour Dates On-Sale
January 16, 2026 BY Emma Orland
Prolific Los Angeles-based electronic artist The Album Leaf steers into 2026 with his new single, “Fight or Flight,” featuring singer Aisha Badru. He notes, “This song was actually created back in 2021. I had written the original track during the ‘Future Falling’ sessions, and during that long stretch of COVID isolation, I began exploring collaborations on songs that had space for a vocalist. Nettwerk connected me with Aisha Badru, who wrote and recorded her vocals remotely. She brought a deeply internal, unguarded emotional weight to the track—capturing the anxiety of that time, the sense of movement driven by restlessness rather than freedom, and the feeling of trying to outrun something that keeps circling back. Even though we weren’t in the same room, her voice sits at the heart of the song, carrying both tension and vulnerability. James McAlister also contributed percussion remotely, giving the track a subtle human pulse beneath the haze. The entire song came together from a distance, which somehow made it feel even more intimate—living in that space between urgency and stillness.”
LISTEN + SHARE “FIGHT OR FLIGHT”
https://thealbumleaf.ffm.to/fightorflight
The Album Leaf also announced two headline California shows – January 29th at The Casbah in San Diego(moondaddy opening) and January 31st at Zebulon in Los Angeles (Shannon Lay opening). Following the local dates, he will head to Japan for a three-city run presented by the Numero Group and Imakinn Records with support from JeJune and Ethel Meserve. A full list of dates can be found below.
The Album Leaf has had a fruitful few years. He released his acclaimed 2023 full-length album, Future Falling, the 2024 EP, Blast, featuring sax player Aaron D4VD (Anderson Paak., Tyler The Creator, Herbie Hancock), the 2025 experimental ambient project Rotations, a series of remixes by esteemed artists like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Dustin O’Halloran, Boom Bip, andBalmorhea, and has written several scores including Things Will Be Different (SXSW 2024 premiere), Man Finds Tape (currently streaming on demand) and Touch Me (Sundance 2025 and will hit theaters on March 20th).
Stay tuned for more to come from The Album Leaf.
TOUR DATES:
+ with support from moondaddy
> with support from Shannon Lay
* with support from Jejune & Ethel Meserve
1/29 San Diego, CA The Casbah +
1/31 Los Angeles, CA Zebulon >
2/7 Tokyo, Japan Club Quattro *
2/8 Osaka, Japan Socore Factory *
2/10 Kyoto, Japan Urbanguild *
2/11 Nagoya, Japan Huck Finn *
2/12 Tokyo, Japan O-Nest
ABOUT THE ALBUM LEAF:
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) 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.
A prolific musician, he has also composed music for film and television, scoring over 20 projects, including award-winning films, the Calm App, Netflix shows, and commercials for companies like Nike and Google. In 2023, he released his first record in seven years, FUTURE FALLING, a fluid, cohesive record featuring collaborations with Bat For Lashes and Kimbra, and exhibits LaValle as emblematically inquisitive and renewed by outside perspectives.
