About
Zen Fuzz is a music project started in 2019 by Jenny Lee Maas (aka JLee). It's eclectic with a focus on experimental and emotionally impactful sounds with lyrics that are both personal and political.
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Bio
This project started as 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 regularly. Maas uses her artistic skills to make music videos and fashions to accompany her sound.
Jenny in designs she made; A wave gown based on sound waves & a music video outtake for Resist in a J.L.Maas dress. 2025&24
The Pandemic made Maas' art & design business difficult so she pivoted to music. She started learning how to record and produce music, it was always something she wanted to do and finally had uninterrupted time to do so. She released a few singles and an EP. These tracks were more instrumental so she wanted to bring her voice and poetry into the next release.
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 first full solo album. Some of the songs have been drafts for over a decade while others were fresh and completely new.
This gives her first full solo album, Phenomenology a span of time and influence.
As she started recording songs, she knew she wanted to practice traditional song structures. Since a kid she has 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.
Jenny Lee 2023 & 25
She had a vintage Yamaha VSS sampler that she got in college, the mic on it was breaking so she brought it to Hayden Harasta, an artist based in Philly, he asked her if she would like the instrument bent, which was something Maas always wanted to try. He Frankensteined the instrument, adding a patch board that bends the circuit of the sampler mic. During the pandemic a friend suggested the Bent // Broken Circuit bent festival, it started online and has a live element as well. Maas took the opportunity and has partaken in the online festival several times and one live one. During a time when the world was shut down this gave her a chance to experiment and share with a niche community of sound artists. She mixed traditional instruments with the unpredictable sounds of the bent VSS. Once the sound is changed it cannot go back and there is no predictability, so it was a fun, poetic, musical and experimental process for her.
Bent // Broken Circuit Bent Fest. 2023 online & 24 live
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, R & B, experimental, spoken word and sometimes rap. This also introduced her to local musicians to work with.
In 2025, Bennett Purdy joined the project as a percussionist. Together, they are developing a live sound that is both fun and thought-provoking. They performed several shows in the Philly area and are rehearsing for more events.
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 as 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.
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 sometimes played rhythm guitar accompanying folk musicians. She was busy learning various art forms and too shy to perform herself.
College Daze
She struggled to speak up at times, and in grade school she was put in special classes for kids they didn't know what to do with, who weren't like everyone else, which undoubtedly led to anxieties. So, on a few occasions of either taking music classes or attempting to collaborate with others she sometimes felt shut down by harsh energies but always kept her guitar and a keyboard around to experiment on.
Writing and expression were always important to her, sometimes she had difficulties being articulate so she used art and music to sharpen it.
Her music, art and design have 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 emotional range can be expressed and explored… 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. Her approach to music reflects these approaches.
Fashion & art of Jenny, used for Zen Fuzz projects
If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
We hope that you will follow us and stay updated for shows and releases!
Peace
(Lots of pics because I'm an artist)