artist Owen Pallett

Heartland exists.  The third Final Fantasy record was self-released on For Great Justice Records, January 12, 2010.  The album is the product of nine months of work in four countries.  Heartland is a fully orchestral record, designed to exist simultaneously as an album, a 45-minute piece of orchestral music and a set of songs for looped violin and voice.  Owen Pallett explains:

"The album is about the beginning, middle and end of a relationship. But it's sung from the point of view of the object of my affection."

"Heartland was compositionally modeled upon the principles of electronic music.  The principles of analog synthesis informing symphonic writing, like an inversion of a Tomita record.  These songs, too, were designed to be as dense with polyphony as the Final Fantasy live shows can become.  While writing it, I kept an image in my head of putting so many notes on the page that the paper turned black."

Work began in earnest in November 2008, when Pallett and Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara flew to Reykjavik to work at The Greenhouse, Valgeir Siggurdsson's studio (Björk's Medulla, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's The Letting Go) with engineer Mio Thórrison at the board.  The orchestra was recorded January 2009, in Prague, with the Czech Symphony.  Other guests include Matt Smith (Nifty),  Reg Vermue (Gentleman Reg) and Nico Muhly.  Rusty Santos, who produced Animal Collective's Sung Tongs and mixed Panda Bear's Person Pitch, was taken on as mixer.  He and Owen worked together in Toronto and New York over the summer of 2009 putting the finishing touches on Heartland.