Biography
Aurelio Valle, the New York-based singer, songwriter, and film composer, first drew widespread attention through his central role in the experimental rock band Calla, which he launched in 1997. Raised in Kingsville, Texas, by parents who had immigrated from Mexico, he absorbed mariachi and ranchera sounds in childhood before discovering skate rock and punk as a teenager, an encounter that led him to start playing guitar. The earliest version of Calla took shape in Denton, Texas, when Valle teamed with Wayne Magruder and Peter Gannon to create the Factory Press. That group shifted to New York in 1995, dissolved two years later, and immediately reassembled under the Calla name as a recording project with largely the same personnel. Valle guided the ensemble’s debut album onto Brussels label Sub Rosa in 1999, where it received strong critical notice. The group’s mix of raw sonic experimentation, electronics, and cinematic references to Ennio Morricone matured across subsequent releases as they began performing live and issued records on several independent outlets, among them Young God Records, founded by Swans frontman Michael Gira, and Blanco y Negro Records, the Rough Trade/WEA subsidiary. After the 2007 appearance of their seventh album, Strength in Numbers, the members parted on friendly terms; Valle then withdrew from performing, apprenticed as a motorcycle mechanic, took a job in a tailor shop, and composed occasional film scores, including music for the 2009 German feature Zarte Parasiten. In the years that followed he slowly assembled new material inside his Brooklyn apartment, which sat beneath a noisy elevated subway line. Working deliberately, he shaped the dark, textural pop songs that became his first solo album, Acme Power Transmission, titled after his landlord’s auto-parts store, and issued the record in March 2014 on his own Nuevo Leon label.