Jimmy LaValle befriended Sugur Ros in 2003, went to Iceland with them, and crafted a chillingly delicate and more pop based album than ever before. IN a SAFE PLACE masterfully negotiates the space between minimal electronic music and melancholy instrumental neo-rock. The inclusion of vocals from Pall Jenkins, Jon Thor Birgisson (Sigur Ros) and LaValle himself is one of the striking results from this newly collaborative process.

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Listening to the Album Leaf is like watching the sunrise: nothing much happens, but it sure is pretty. Tristeza, Gogogo Airheart and Black Heart Procession multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Lavelle's post-rock solo project has toed the line between beauty and boredom since 1999, and his third full-length is no different. Recorded in Sigur Ros' Mosfellsbaer, Iceland studio, In a Safe Place is a mostly instrumental collection of new agey meanderings and orchestral pop-perfect mood music for upscale massage parlors and sushi restaurants. The drowsy tempo, twinkling bells and mournful cello (provided by Mum's Gyda Valtysdottir) of the delicate opening track "Window" sets the album's relaxed tone. It would be easy to drift off to the folky "On Your Way," featuring vocals by BHP's Pall Jenkins, or "Twenty Two Fourteen," which, with its languid strings and gentle IDM jitters, suggests a collaboration between Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Jimmy Tamborello of the Postal Service. But the faerie-child lisp of Sigur Ros' Jon Thor Birgisson on the stately "Over the Pond" (is he really singing "suicide looker" over and over?) or the throbbing pulse and ticking electronic beats of "Eastern Glow" will quickly bring you back to earth. Unfortunately, nothing on In a Safe Place is interesting enough to have staying power, and its songs vanish into thin air like sweet, but soon forgotten, daydreams.

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