"As I’m currently 19, I’m still learning from the new experiences I encounter, but my experiences during Fantastic Planet are the roots of me finding out that I’m an “alien” from Fantastic Planet; or in other words, the beginning of me as an artist, a storyteller." - Lealani
In January of 2019, Pomona, CA based Lealani will release her debut album, Fantastic Planet, with Dome of Doom. As a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, the framework of Fantastic Planet blends together electronic, synth pop, indie rock and more for a singular sound. Over the last three months, mixing and mastering were completed by Wylie Cable and Lealani at Dome of Doom HQ in Los Angeles, producing an album flowing with colorful expression and pure inner reflection. Lealani composed and recorded everything across the 49-minute album between the ages of 12 and 18, adding synths, samples, drums, guitar, and vintage toy-like instruments. Some tracks were written, recorded and finalized in one session, with others staying in rough draft form and retooled for years. Before the Fantastic Planet LP took shape, Lealani launched the "Fantastic Planet" radio show on Claremont, CA's KSPC, 88.7FM. Running for many years now, she would start all shows with, "Welcome earthlings, my earthlings, my aliens, you have just landed on Fantastic Planet!," and from then on, she became known as "your alien host from Fantastic Planet." The mythos behind the radio show and the album's conceptual basis are one and the same, serving as reflections of an artist fully engulfed in their craft.
The sonic pallet of her debut contains an expansive terrain, glued together through unique vocal cadences and lyricism that make every song glow with mysticism.
The electronic underpinnings, raw guitar lines, poignant synths, and expansive rhythms make a defining presence to Fantastic Planet's whole. The album's only instrumental, "Galant Bloom," orchestrates the importance of these areas, looping lush guitar lines with a beautiful driving electronic drum section that's organically meshed together. The final addition of synth layering gives the music its highest sense of emotional character, performed with lyricism that holds a soulful depth. The scope of the music is vast across the entire album, with "Miniscule" flipping an overcharged synth sequence and staggering self-tapped drum pattern that powers its way into every measure. The music is explosive, angular, and fierce, dawned as one of the more intense pieces of Fantastic Planet. "Floating" extends the variety of the record into an opposite direction, exploring a softer, somber, and more colorful form. It draws to mind new wave and other forms of music during the '80s. The range is endless across the LP.
Lealani's LP is now available on
domeofdoom.bandcamp.com/album/fantastic-planet
and all streaming platforms