by Tina Whelski
Whether he’s composing music for Tori Amos’ RAINN organization or for his latest album, Ex-Sensitive, singer/songwriter Ben Jelen writes about things that stir him up, and he records while his feelings are fresh. Jelen talks about the creative process on his follow up to Give It All Away.
How have you grown as an artist since Give It All Away and how has that influenced Ex-Sensitive?
I’d say I’ve had a natural progression as a musical artist. I’ve played more, lived more and taken the writing to a new level. During the recording of Ex-Sensitive I also had my hands untied by working with producer Linda Perry. Creative freedom was something I had to fight a lot more for during the making of Give it All Away. Since Give it All Away, I spent some time in India which influenced me musically more than I thought it would. I was only there for a month traveling, but came back with all kinds of instruments and a tanpura drone synthesizer to play along to. Following my return I spent hours on the violin discovering new scales and times of playing. It’s been exciting for me to explore. “Pulse,” the first track on Ex-Sensitive begins with that idea of a drone and Linda playing the electric Sitar. In fact, you can hear the electronic tanpura I bought mixed in there. My life was also affected from the trip which is reflected in the lyrics.
Will you talk about some songs from Ex-Sensitive?
“Pulse” had quite an interesting creation. It was one of the very first started on the record and the very last finished. Linda and I went out into the live room one evening, me on the violin and her with an electric guitar. We weren’t necessarily expecting anything, but played down a four-minute song, complete with me filling in melodies with “ahhhs” and other indecipherable words. This strange track got called “Pulse” because of the pulsing feel to her guitar playing. We got excited about it just from the feeling it gave. It was a ghostly track for a long time because we could never replicate it and every time we tried, the tones or the emotion weren’t there like in that magical track. We even tried building up other instruments around the track! We ended up having this version of “Pulse” for about a year until we sat down and had a long conversation, which we wrote lyrics from. That night when we went in and played it down with the band it finally came alive again. It felt great to feel like “Pulse” was finished because it gave the album a beginning.
“The Other Side” is a song I wrote a couple of years ago when I was asked to try writing a song for a movie. It never came to anything but I always liked it and brought it on my CD of songs to play Linda when we were starting. I used to play it on guitar, and it had an almost country feel to it. When she heard it, she turned the whole thing around, put me on the organ and played the electric guitar herself. The drummer played a driving beat and the song felt new to me. We kept one of the first takes and left the song really raw. This one ends the album.
You dedicate time to charities, which influenced your work on Ex-Sensitive. How?
The charity I feel closest too is the Natural Resources Defense Council. I see global warming and climate change as very real problem for humankind and I can’t be happy with the way we live until we’re at least headed in the right direction, away from oil and coal and towards alternate forms of energy. These themes pervade the album, coming up in songs like “Counting Down” and “Wreckage.” I’m hoping that people will see the “Pulse” video and understand how badly climate change will affect third world countries—the lack of water and food can be a main ingredient to a situation like there is now in Darfur.
Watch Ben Jelen perform "Come On."
Interview originally published in The Aquarian Weekly.
How have you grown as an artist since Give It All Away and how has that influenced Ex-Sensitive?
I’d say I’ve had a natural progression as a musical artist. I’ve played more, lived more and taken the writing to a new level. During the recording of Ex-Sensitive I also had my hands untied by working with producer Linda Perry. Creative freedom was something I had to fight a lot more for during the making of Give it All Away. Since Give it All Away, I spent some time in India which influenced me musically more than I thought it would. I was only there for a month traveling, but came back with all kinds of instruments and a tanpura drone synthesizer to play along to. Following my return I spent hours on the violin discovering new scales and times of playing. It’s been exciting for me to explore. “Pulse,” the first track on Ex-Sensitive begins with that idea of a drone and Linda playing the electric Sitar. In fact, you can hear the electronic tanpura I bought mixed in there. My life was also affected from the trip which is reflected in the lyrics.
Will you talk about some songs from Ex-Sensitive?
“Pulse” had quite an interesting creation. It was one of the very first started on the record and the very last finished. Linda and I went out into the live room one evening, me on the violin and her with an electric guitar. We weren’t necessarily expecting anything, but played down a four-minute song, complete with me filling in melodies with “ahhhs” and other indecipherable words. This strange track got called “Pulse” because of the pulsing feel to her guitar playing. We got excited about it just from the feeling it gave. It was a ghostly track for a long time because we could never replicate it and every time we tried, the tones or the emotion weren’t there like in that magical track. We even tried building up other instruments around the track! We ended up having this version of “Pulse” for about a year until we sat down and had a long conversation, which we wrote lyrics from. That night when we went in and played it down with the band it finally came alive again. It felt great to feel like “Pulse” was finished because it gave the album a beginning.
“The Other Side” is a song I wrote a couple of years ago when I was asked to try writing a song for a movie. It never came to anything but I always liked it and brought it on my CD of songs to play Linda when we were starting. I used to play it on guitar, and it had an almost country feel to it. When she heard it, she turned the whole thing around, put me on the organ and played the electric guitar herself. The drummer played a driving beat and the song felt new to me. We kept one of the first takes and left the song really raw. This one ends the album.
You dedicate time to charities, which influenced your work on Ex-Sensitive. How?
The charity I feel closest too is the Natural Resources Defense Council. I see global warming and climate change as very real problem for humankind and I can’t be happy with the way we live until we’re at least headed in the right direction, away from oil and coal and towards alternate forms of energy. These themes pervade the album, coming up in songs like “Counting Down” and “Wreckage.” I’m hoping that people will see the “Pulse” video and understand how badly climate change will affect third world countries—the lack of water and food can be a main ingredient to a situation like there is now in Darfur.
Watch Ben Jelen perform "Come On."
Interview originally published in The Aquarian Weekly.
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