LOVE BASH, amplifies diverse voices on debut album, FALLING UPWARD, out now!
Queer electro-pop collective, LOVE BASH,
amplifies diverse voices on debut album,
FALLING UPWARD, out now!
LISTEN HERE
(New York, NY) Love Bash arrives in grand fashion with their long-awaited full-length debut, Falling Upward. The Philadelphia area-based duo of Adelaide “Adi” Day (she/her) and Brandon Christopher (he/him) – co-founders of both Love Bash and the independent production company, Spruce Alley – have crafted a musical multiverse that chronicles Adi's journey of gender transition through an exuberant interplay of deeply felt songcraft, collectivist performance, and limitless creative invention. While intensely personal, songs like the uplifting, optimistic pop of “Lemonade” and the sonorous, trap-infused “Falling” present a patently universal perspective on how each of us navigate life's perpetual fluidity, understanding that each passing day is filled with possibility and continual change. The panoramic range of Love Bash's timeless sonic approach – encompassing elements of dance, synthwave, house, gospel, soul, indie, R&B, and more – extend those humanist themes even further, its blissful electro-pop lit by singular ingenuity, audacious energy, and a remarkable spirit of purpose. Falling Upward is a heart-rending, searching, but ultimately joyful celebration of self-affirmation and diversity, of our common need to embrace one's true identity and live to our fullest capacity with passion and integrity.
“We believe in respecting everyone's diverse views, talents, and personalities,” says Brandon Christopher, “and that everyone can find purpose and joy through engaging with ourselves, listening to our hearts, and developing our individuality. For this project, we brought together a wide variety of creatives and endeavored to incorporate everyone's unique talents in service to a universal humanistic theme of self-exploration and the acceptance and love for all people, this is the meaning of Love Bash!”
Love Bash began in 2022 when Adi, a successful entrepreneur with a Master's in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, moved to the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, PA after years immersed in a diverse international community in China. A series of life changes – from open heart surgery for a congenital heart defect to the end of a 15-year marriage – forced an epiphanic reevaluation of what mattered most.
“It all brought me back to music as the one thing I really want to do with my time,” Adi says. “I wanted to be doing something I love, and music is such therapy.”
As fate would have it, living right next door was Brandon Christopher, a drummer, producer, and in-demand mixing/recording engineer with a long family history of musical accomplishment. The new neighbors became fast friends and soon began making music together. The resulting partnership was fueled by mutual admiration and musical respect, a union in which Brandon's knack for cutting-edge production was seamlessly woven together with Adi's sophisticated compositions to create something unprecedented. Working in Adi's rehearsal space and Brandon's home recording studio next door, the duo integrated their dissimilar backgrounds into a colorful sound of their own, flourishing in the overlap between musical genres while also suggesting infinite future possibilities.
“It's like whittling away at big blocks of marble,” Brandon says. “We kept going back to the drawing board, bouncing ideas off each other. One day, we were working on the song 'Twilight' and it just kind of showed itself – we let the vocals sit on top, with an electro-pop sound as the foundation supporting it. We thought, alright, this could be something.”
“Instead of focusing on one sound, we suddenly realized, we have this huge palette here,” Adi says. “We could throw everything at it and move through many different feelings. We could use it to create tension, we could use it to create excitement, to create joy, there's all these different emotions really coming through.”
Falling Upward follows the path of Adi's journey towards transition in staggering detail, chronicling her struggle to come to terms with trauma and unmet expectation, of suffering great loss before finally achieving self-acceptance through an understanding of who she truly is. From the album-opening “By My Side,” with its ecstatic brass and choir (and alluring vocals from Rachael Green) and the haunting “Nights Crawling” (featuring classically trained singer Ruby Dibble) to the sharp intensity of “Never Know” (showcasing edgy vocals from rocker Elizabeth Kinslow) and gripping electro-rock of “Say What You Mean” (featuring explosive vocals from veteran musician/sound engineer Larry James), the album explores the myriad emotions and experiences of Adi's remarkable odyssey, using the unmatched power of music to relate her fight for personal agency.
The creative process of writing and recording Falling Upward enabled Adi to at last find her true identity. The album – and in many ways, Adi's real life journey – reaches its transcendent crescendo with the epic “Twilight,” showcasing Dibble's operatic vocals amidst an orchestral drama of strings, piano, and tribal drums.
“This album was written at the end of my previous life living as a man and before I began my transition,” Adi says. 'Twilight' is a cliffhanger with a lot of suspense and trepidation on what would be the next step in my life. Without the conception of myself as a woman, I couldn't make sense of my experiences, feelings, and true motivations. I wasn't ready to change at that time, I truly didn't want to accept or to be myself. This song represents my final release from that mold, the letting go of old ideas of myself and my feelings of being lost in that moment.
Love Bash's sweeping approach towards music and artistic collaboration has further bloomed with the creation of a wide range of multimedia content complimenting Falling Upward. The intimate world-building of Adi's songs has extended into increasingly innovative visual productions, complimenting the music with state-of-the-art animation, eye-catching music videos, imaginative costume design, and more.
Love Bash remains nose to the grindstone, working on new songs and content while also directing their seemingly limitless energies towards establishing an inclusive working environment for other LGBTQ+ artists via their independent production company, Spruce Alley. Though their project began as an act of personal self-expression, Adi and Brandon have come to an understanding that Love Bash is not only about their own narrative, but embracing similar needs in others and the greater community around them.
Rich with deeply personal meaning, ardent integrity, and an unwavering belief in creating something greater than themselves, Falling Upward captures a brave and idiosyncratic duo buoyed up by an evolving sense of scope and their own abilities. Love Bash is determined to continue pushing boundaries within their art and within themselves, embracing their own extraordinary uniqueness in order to break the toxic expectations and the chains – internal and external – that the world puts upon us all.
