There’s an alternative timeline out there in the multiverse where ‘Cleave’, the debut studio album from long-distance electronica duo Vallis Alps, doesn’t exist. Hell, in that same timeline, Vallis Alps probably doesn’t exist either.
Vocalist Parissa Tosif and producer David Ansari came charging out of the gates in 2015 with their self-titled EP, which sported the Gold-certified single ‘Young’, an appearance at that year’s Splendour in the Grass and, in the year following, a nomination for Unearthed Artist Of The Year at the J Awards.
After the release of second EP ‘Fable’ in 2017, though, the bloom had come off the rose somewhat – internally, at least. Work began on the album, but after nearly a year of chipping away from different parts of the world – Tosif in Sydney, Ansari in New York – the proverbial camel’s back was a straw away from breaking.
“By 2019, things had gotten to a point where we weren’t able to get any work done,” Ansari recalls. “We just weren’t able to communicate without getting into fights. I think the crux of it was that there’s so much you can understand in-person, and so much that gets missed when you’re not.”
While most bands would be hiring people like artwork designers and PR teams in the lead-up to their debut album, Vallis Alps instead found themselves in the dramatic but necessary position of hiring a mediator. Through this process, they were ultimately able to reconcile the seemingly insurmountable differences and finish what they had started. “I think there was a lot that stemmed from us working together for many years, and little issues building up along the way based on how different we are as people,” Tosif says.
“You have to lay everything out on the table, and have deep discussions, but it’s really hard to do that when you’re also angry at someone. When the mediation conversation happened, we were both unsure initially, but we had two paths: give up completely, or see if we could salvage things. It’s definitely a fortuitous thing that mediation was suggested, because it really turned things around.”
The end result, ‘Cleave’, is a testament to the group’s survival. An ornate and lush album of soaring electronic pop, its deep emotional through-line and crystalline production makes it an exciting listen – even without knowing a shred of the context, which elevates the entire proceedings. That context doesn’t just mean the fraught circumstances of its creation, either: ‘Higher Than This’, which was released in February when the album was announced, becomes far weightier when paired with a powerful statement by Tosif to coincide with its release.
“We want people to feel uplifted when they hear this album, and feel reflective as well as they honour life and its big questions” – Parissa Tosif
“I’m raising a daughter, the women of my motherland of Iran are on fire and me and the women in my life are tired of battling the sexism and misogyny we feel every day,” she wrote. “Society needs women to be equal for society to truly progress. We need girls to be educated for the world to reach its true potential.”
Tosif tells NME that as a songwriter she has come to “use music to get to know reality in a deeper way”.
“Writing a song to delve deeper into a feeling has always been a big part of my creative process,” she says. “On ‘Higher Than This’, I was reflecting on being a woman, and experiencing constant toxic masculinity. Maribelle [Anis, aka co-writer Vetta Borne] and I were reflecting on our experiences as women in the music industry, and how society holds itself back because all genders are not seen as equal. How sad for our oppressors that they’re not able to interact with life in a beautiful way, because they’re choosing the path of being horrible to others.”
Though both Tosif and Ansari are of Iranian heritage, neither had made particular note of it within their music prior to ‘Cleave’. Another key track on the album, ‘Everything, All You See’, was a reckoning of sorts for Tosif. “As I was singing it in the studio, I was thinking a lot about culture and ethnicity,” she says.
“I’d always felt like I never fit in anywhere. I grew up in Singapore to Iranian parents, who left the country when they were really young. I’ve never been to Iran; I didn’t really have a close connection with it, so I never felt connected to any ethnic group. I found myself using that song to go deeper into this state of mind. When I find people who are associated with my morals and values, that’s when I can be confident in myself and who I am – and my ethnicity is part of that.”
‘You And I’, the album’s fourth single, was another key creative breakthrough. According to Ansari, if we were to go back into the multiverse and find the timeline where Vallis Alps immediately put out their debut album after their two EPs, ‘You And I’ would never have been possible.
“It’s probably the most direct reference to our friendship that’s ever made it into a song,” he says. “It’s literally about how we don’t get along. It felt like a moment where we could really sit in that pain of having to confront that seriously. That was definitely a song we couldn’t have stumbled on any earlier than we did.”
Tosif agrees, noting that the lyrics originally stemmed from an entirely separate situation. “I wrote the verses based on this person that I met who blatantly said he didn’t believe in gender equality,” she says. “It was a really confronting experience. I sent it to David, he wrote this beautiful chorus and was like, ‘this really reminds me of our friendship’ – which was kind of funny. When we finished mediation, we were able to really take the song to where it is now. I think almost all those songs reached a turning point, where we realised they weren’t authentically their best versions until we’d been through that.”
‘Cleave’ is the sound of a band standing in its truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how dark and ugly it can get. With its release, Tosif and Ansari hope that listeners will find their own reflections within it – regardless of whether they’ve been a fan since day one or are only just discovering them.
“We really love people submerging their minds into our music,” says Tosif. “We want people to feel uplifted when they hear this album, and feel reflective as well as they honour life and its big questions. It’s an album about growing, and wanting to grow, while moving forward.”
Vallis Alps’ ‘Cleave’ is out now. The band tour the US in September and October