The Album Leaf’s Jimmy LaValle finds A Safe Place
By John Schacht
The Album Leaf is big in Iceland. What's big in Iceland? Well, according to San Diego's Jimmy LaValle, the founder and only permanent member of The Album Leaf (who play the Neighborhood Theatre Friday), about "10 percent of the population" there buy his records. While those numbers may seem inflated, LaValle says that in Iceland it's virtually the "equivalent of a gold record."
Icelanders and the rest of us have another chance to sample LaValle's wares with A Safe Place, The Album Leaf's recently released (June 22) disc. While SubPop, his new label, hasn't broken down the sales figures yet, they were aware of LaValle's potential before signing him. A member -- until January 2003 -- of the San Diego-based, guitar-driven instrumental experimentalists Tristeza, LaValle had treated The Album Leaf (named after a Chopin piece) as his quieter side project. (The multi-dimensional LaValle is also the bassist for the gorgeously gloomy Black Heart Procession, and, in addition to his years in Tristeza, was also in post-punk noise gurus The Locust and beat-happy GoGoGo Airheart.)
But Iceland changed The Album Leaf's status. Or, to be more precise, Iceland's Sigur Rs did. Riding high on the success of their second record (and first US release), Ágætis Byrjun -- Iceland's second most popular musical export (after Bjork) invited a surprised LaValle to tour with them as The Album Leaf on their Fall 2001 tour (and practically every tour since). The Album Leaf's first record, 1999's An Orchestrated Rise to Fall, made a big impression with the right Icelanders, and it's not difficult to hear why. With a marvelously spacious sound, gentle drum and bass sampling, organic instrumentation (mostly keys, some guitar) and Eno-esque atmospherics, The Album Leaf's textural dreamscapes seem aptly suited for long nights and stark landscapes -- and not all that removed from the same sound bands like Sigur Rs and Múm are exploring.
But, in another example of The Album Leaf's stature with Icelandic musicians, there was a fundamental question to be decided before the two bands could begin their inaugural tour.
"They were actually wondering if they were going to have to open for me, which is pretty funny," LaValle says of the platinum-selling Sigur Rs.
Though The Album Leaf opened the dates, LaValle eventually wound up joining Sigur Rs on stage during their sets. And it was on that first tour that the foundation for A Safe Place initially came into focus. It also turned out to be the death of The Album Leaf as a side project, and the beginning of the next stage of the 26-year-old, classically trained LaValle's music career.
Since that first tour together, the members of Sigur Rs have suggested LaValle come to Iceland and record. It took a while to work out the particulars, but LaValle eventually accepted the open invitation and went to the North Atlantic isle for three separate, two-week-long recording sessions from August to October in 2003.
"I've always felt that the music I make is perfect for that kind of (Icelandic) setting," LaValle says.
Staying in the village of Mosfellsbaer and recording in Sigur Rs' studio -- an old empty indoor swimming pool from the 1930s -- LaValle spent most of his time in the studio alone or just with engineer Birgir Jon Birgisson. Along the way, various Icelandic musicians -- as well as two key members of Black Heart Procession -- came by to lend their talents to the proceedings.
The results, while basically similar in aesthetic to previous Album Leaf records, also differ in key ways. From the opening cathedral-like synth bells of "Window" -- which sounds like the music you might hear staring at a barren tundra from a low-flying plane's window -- there's an evanescent feel, a soft-focus of detail that virtually induces visual images of Icelandic terrain. In fact, on his current tour with members of San Diego's Via Satellite, a projectionist who also provides beats runs visuals synched to the music throughout the show.
