A Mexican Mutantes?: After seven years and $40,000, the Ledezma brothers unveil a masterpiece of Mexican-American psych pop. – Allá’s new album Es Tiempo From: chicagoreader.com

In 2001 Jorge Ledezma was playing synths in Defender with his older brother, Angel, on drums and their friend Gabor Meszaros also on synths. I’d probably seen them open for dozens of indie and punk bands by then—like hundreds of bands in Chicago, they had enough juice to snag a good support slot, but not to headline. But at around that time Jorge decided to stop competing with those bands—he wanted to leapfrog past them, and the ones they were opening for too. He set his sights on the lofty heights occupied by universally recognized pop geniuses like Brian Wilson.

The catalyst was a song he was recording with Defender called “El Movimiento.” It had strayed from their Krautrock-inspired synth-punk style, and he and Angel thought it would be better served by their side project, Allá, whose much more organic sound marries colorful psych pop and Mexican folk. Gradually the Defender album they were working on became Allá’s in-progress debut, and the side project became their focus. Jorge, then 24, decided that the Allá record would be his “do-or-die moment.””*

go to their MySpace page to give them a listen

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