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Valley Maker

Valley Maker shares new single ‘Instrument’ taken from new album When The Day Leaves released 19th Feb via Frenchkiss Records.

Austin Crane also known as Valley Maker, has shared new single ‘Instrument’, taken from his upcoming new album When the Day Leaves out February 19 via Frenchkiss Records. Valley Maker previously shared ‘No One Is Missing’ and ‘Mockingbird’ from the album.

Instrument’ comes with another stunning music video filmed and directed by Joseph Kolean and Zach Gutierrez, and incorporates film footage that Austin captured on a Super 8 camera in the North Carolina mountains. They collaborated on the music video for previous single ‘Mockingbird’ - Austin notes,

“Through mixing mediums and blending human and natural worlds, we wanted the ‘Instrument’ video to visually be in conversation with what we created for ‘Mockingbird,’ and with the landscape of the album cover.”

He continues,

"I wrote 'Instrument' as a meditation on the challenges of persevering, of loving the world and other people, and of maintaining a hopeful vision for the future in these times we're living through.

The uncertain future of our planet, with climate change and related natural disasters, always feels very present for me in these considerations.

So the song and video reflect both upon anxieties and affections for our world; they explore what it means to remain a part of it all, to carry on amidst human and elemental uncertainty."


The time commitment is a crucial component of When the Day Leaves. For 46 minutes, you feel like you’re sitting with Crane in an intricate, unified sound-world of his design. He offloads his observations about our tangled thicket of hope and fear, aspiration and exasperation.

When the Day Leaves is an uninterrupted sequence of reflections about the generational limbo of being awed by and worried for this world. The anxiety of uncertainty—always part of life but now seemingly omnipresent—can be vexing, a reality these songs acknowledge. Crane, as he sings at one point, is fully “aligned with my blues.

But these songs also affirm that life is an endless opportunity for renewal, for trying again.

When The Day Leaves is out 19th Feb via Frenchkiss Records Pre-order here


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