No, his modus operandi is far more melodic than that. LaValle started his musical career as a drummer, and currently supplies vocals, synths, piano and guitar to The Album Leaf’s musical potion, so there’s no chance of seeing him huddled mutely over a MacBook idly pressing keys to churn out bleeps and bloops. Since forming The Album Leaf in 1998, LaValle has gradually accrued a healthy fanbase and a reputation as an eminently listenable ambient musician.Ĭombining live-played instruments and vocals with recorded loops and electronic soundbites, LaValle’s music exhibits not only a finely-tuned ear for melody and composition, but also a genuine musicality often lacking in the efforts of lesser synth-smiths. One act which fits into the latter category would certainly be The Album Leaf, the musical project of San Diego multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle.
In some cases, these pithy assessments are accurate, as anyone who’s been subjected to a bad chillout compilation will attest, but in others nothing could be further from the truth. You could view it as simply the product of a digital age inhabited by kids with too much time and technology on their hands, or of people who can’t play ‘real’ instruments. Ambient music is a genre which is extremely easy to shrug off.
