BEN JELEN RELEASES EX SENSITIVE WITH HELP FROM LINDA PERRY

Singer song writer Ben Jelen has released his latest album, ‘Ex Sensitive’ on Linda Perry’s Custard label and Ben honed his musical skills traveling the world and refining his ability to write about socailly conscious themes and ideas. ‘Ex Sensitive’ is Ben Jelen’s follow up to his debut LP ‘Give it All Away’ and it being his Custard debut, this was the first time Ben was able to work in the studio with Perry, who has many song writing hits to her credit has written for and produced such talents as Gwen Stefani, Pink and Christina Aguilera as well as signing James Blunt to her Custard Label as well.

We caught up with Ben Jelen to find out his thoughts on ‘Ex Sensitive’ and having Linda Perry producing the album on her Custard label.

“I approached Linda originally. I kind of knocked on her door and said ‘Hi!’ and she said ‘Come play for me’ and pressed record and that was that. She really liked some of the music. I had a CD full of about thirty tracks so doing a whole album wasn’t such a big stretch at that point. She’s got an amazing studio and it’s full vintage instruments and the album reflects her studio. The production is so organic and not synthesized at all.”

Ben’s last LP, which was 2004’s ‘Give it All Away’ dealt with songs built around a theme of love but on his latest release Ben deals with songs that are more socially conscious and touch on dark aspects to our worsening global situations. We also caught up with Ben to discuss his responsibility to not only write songs with deep issues, but also being a socially aware person is something he can’t escape.

“Then there’s another video for the song ‘Pulse’ which is more of a statement video about all the things that are going on in the world right now and all the things that we can do to help these issues. Such as Global warming, such as Darfur, such as the parallells to Vietnam that are happening right now. These are all themes that are in the video for ‘Pulse.’ It’s a responsibility as a person to be talking about these issues without a microphone to your friends and to people you’re interacting with. So, for me to being in front of a microphone, I don’t change much and I still want to talk about those issues. So they’re in my songs, they’re in my music, they are in my videos and I can never escape these issues.”

With ‘Ex Sensitive’ finally in stores, Ben Jelen will next be on the road touring with Pete Yorn beginning July 21st in St. Louis Missouri and extending until August 18th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After turning heads performing at Bonnaroo this past June, it was also recentley announced that Ben Jelen will be performing August 4th at The Virgin Festival in Baltimore Maryland, joining The Police, Ben Harper, The Beastie Boys, Velvet Revolver and many others.