Alex Leonard, from Ireland, based in Berlin, trades as Ebauche and Exan and under a third nom-de-musique, Dronal, which incarnation amalgamates synthesized drone and field recordings. Dronal provides Leonard the canvas to explore the ambiguous boundary between the natural world and the one we have built on top of it (and needless to say, increasingly at odds with it). Over the course of its nine extended tracks, Whilst We Fall successfully maintains a delicate balance, reveling the natural world and celebrating mankind, while despairing of the pain and loss the latter have inflicted on the former. Leonard has sculpted an engrossing, almost documentary ambient tour-de-force, an eminently enjoyable album that poses serious questions as it floats by. A meticulously crafted suite where cautious optimism tempers understandable skepticism, Whilst We Fall is a deep and turbid river of individual and collective consciousness.
Stephen Fruitman
Avant Music News 