Claude says:Jimmy LaValle built The Album Leaf from Rhodes piano and drum machines in San Diego in 1998, a solo outlet while playing guitar in post-rock band Tristeza. Past & Future Tense reworks old minidisc sketches into glowing ambient expanses — layered electronics, patient keys, no vocals. You picked it up the month it came out and kept returning to "MD 5" and "MD 2" through the end of that year, but it faded by spring.