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press Babysue We sure were pleased as punch to open up the package to find a new album from Ledenhed. This unique fellow (Allen Cholach) instantly caught our attention with his debut album (Central Nervous System). The Small Bang! picks up where Ledenhed's debut album left off. This album is actually more fully realized, features slicker production, and more focused songwriting. We can still hear traces of Donovan in this fellow's music, which is most appealing...but the music itself is a strange mix of progressive pop, straightforward pop, electronica, and folk. Ledenhed sums up his music as "hi-res, lo-fi, mid-brow, psych-pop"...and that may just be the best descriptive term for it. Whatever it is, it tends to hit the target dead center. We get the impression from listening to this CD that this man is writing first and foremost out of his pure love of creating and recording music. The sincerity seems to ooze out of every composition on this album. As was the case with the first CD, the vocals are absolutely wonderful. The ideas presented are inviting and ever-so-slightly surreal. Our favorite track is the wonderfully swirling "Open," which features a cool, upbeat message. This guy is talented enough to become a big famous superstar...but our guess is that he probably prefers creating valid music over cranking out generic slop for a mindless large audience. Superb stuff. Highly recommended. LMNOP, Babysue SFWeekly "If I strangle all my fears for you," sings Ledenhed in a halting but crystalline voice, "would you give me something else to do?" Faint washes of synth and a simple, delicate, obsessive guitar line slink through an airy space left for sighs: "Mothered/ Smothered/ By my own cocoon/ As hard is steel/ As blood is blind/ Death isn't free." The instruments employed by the single entity that is Ledenhed strain with urgency, then collapse again into resolved simplicity: "And if/ I kill/ My solitude/ Would you offer/ The sun/ Moon and everything?" Musically inescapable and lyrically unrepentant, "Didn't" is the sort of song that defines a particular point in time and, forever after, the first notes will pull the listener back to that long-forgotten emotional memory. For this, Ledenhed already occupies an exclusive stratosphere among songwriters, but he is more than a one-hit wonder. He is an aural savant, an amorphous aggregator of sound. Deftly distilling and refining the constructs of pop, backbeat, rock, dance music, and even goth, Ledenhed drew early comparisons to Beck (even as the former was still trolling the microphones of local coffeehouses), but the collation must have been in approach rather than issue. Central Nervous System is as singular a manifestation of one artist's psyche as I have heard, unprecedented, unsimulated, and unforgettable. - Silke Tudor, SFweekly CMJ To craft his multi-hued pop style, San Francisco's Ledenhed scoops from the same grab-bag of sonic detritus that fortifies the music of fellow Californian Beck -- trip-hop drum breaks, folk- and blues-nicked acoustic licks and sputtering 808 loops, topped off by a rich dash of late-'90s production flourishes... Central Nervous System's gleefully buzzing overload of instrumental eclecticism and melodic smarts proves the one-man-band both an innovative stylist and a solidly traditional pop songwriter. And beneath the dense barrage of mechanized guitar and drum acrobatics whispers a very personal voice trying to make his statement with any scraps he can get his hands on. - Colin Helms, CMJ Favorite Local CD of the Year, SF Examiner Ledenhed, Central Nervous System: A debut whose sophistication belies the youth of this singer/electronica artist (The City's answer to Moby?). - Jane Ganahl, SF Examiner San Francisco Examiner In the tradition of Beck, San Francisco's own Ledenhed (also a one-name artist) started working with two turntables and a microphone at open-mike nights, adding layers of sound samples as he progressed. The result of studio work with Mark Pistel (Meat Beat Manifesto) is a debut album of astonishing sophistication and startling textures. It seems no one told this guy that pretty melodies - sung in an unfashionably fervent tenor - would be out of place with hip-hop beats and screeching guitar riffs. "Super Myth," the obvious single, is dazzling. Playing gleefully in a sandbox squarely between worlds - trip-hop, pop and punk - Ledenhed is something of a visionary. Watch for big things from this guy. - Jane Ganahl, SF Examiner Babysue
- LMNOP, Babysue |
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