About

Zen Fuzz is a music project started in 2019 by Jenny Lee Maas (aka JLee). It's eclectic with a focus on experimental, yet emotionally impactful sounds and lyrics that are both personal and political. This project started as a solo project, a place for Maas to experiment with sound, lyrics and overcome anxieties around speaking up. Working for years as a multimedia artist Maas has tried many ways of self expression, but music was the most intimidating, so this began as a sort of self challenge with a long term vision of building a band and performing. Maas uses her artistic skills to make music videos and fashions to accompany her sound.

In 2025, Bennett Purdy joined the project as a percussionist. Together, they are developing a live sound that is both fun and thought-provoking.

Prior to Zen Fuzz, Maas infrequently released music under other names (Jenny Lee Maas & Some Dead Lady's Drama). These earlier releases included minimal vocals and accompanied her other creative projects; She made soundtracks for her short films & J.L.Maas runway shows and is featured a a collaborative improviser on a few other projects. She would occasionally perform live in comfortable spaces, like sound baths for yoga studios, which would be about 90 minutes of improvising without traditional song structures.

The Pandemic made Maas' design business difficult so she pivoted to music, she started learning how to record and produce music since it was always something she wanted to do and finally had uninterrupted time to do so. Ideas that kicked around her head for years started being recorded. She always kept a keyboard, loop pedal and guitar in her art and fashion studio, it was what she would do when she hit a wall on her other projects. With dozens of draft ideas on her pedal she had a lot to pull from to begin her album. Some of the songs have been drafts for over a decade while others were fresh and completely new. This gives her first album, Phenomenology a span of time and influence. As she started recording these songs she knew she needed to practice traditional song structures. Since a kid she always loved music and has memorized hundreds of albums, mostly the vocal parts, some of the guitar. So as another self challenge, for over a year she released a cover a week and posted it online. This gave her lots of practice as well as helped her get over said anxieties and put her voice out there. The audience wasn't live, but there was still the pressure to perform well. When it started it would take her a few days to record a song and mix it, by the end of the challenge she could record 4 a day... the challenge worked.

As the pandemic ended Maas started attending jams around Philadelphia to get her used to performing live and improvising. The genres that she sang with varied from ambient, jazz, rock, folk, blues, experimental, spoken word and sometimes rap.

In high school and college she made several short films and would make the soundtracks out of thrifted instruments. She would sometimes play music with friends but never had a full band, she was busy learning various art forms and too shy. She struggled to speak up at times, and in grade school was put in special classes for kids they didn't know what to do with, who weren't like everyone else.

This is why writing and expression were always important to her, sometimes she had difficulties being articulate so she used art and music as a way to sharpen it.

Her music, art and design has always had an eclectic aesthetic. For her, every genre includes important gems to learn from. Like painting, the more colors on the palette means the more an emotional range can be expressed and explored. And also like painting, a masterpiece can be found in an oil painting that takes months to create, or could be a minimal expressionistic piece made of few colors and lines in moments. Both hold value & both communicate different things.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

We hope that you will follow us and stay updated for shows and releases!

Peace