September 29, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

Japanese Zen Spirits And Music. The Band “Zen Land” By World-famous Artists Have Released The First Album


Caution: May cause blissful euphoria. Highly addictive when administered through headphones.
For exhilarations lasting longer than 24 hours, call your physician.

Zen Land’s eponymous first album delivers just short of an hours worth of uncompromisingly artistic, instrumental New Age.

The band’s producer and violinist, Michael Zentner, notes that “beautiful music in the genre of New Age does not have to be shimmery swirls of synthesized, sampled, sequenced swill sitting in some program file waiting for an execute command.” It can also exist, he says, “as performed by living, breathing musicians playing traditional instruments in real time.”

There does exist a synthesized element, provided by keyboardist and ambient recording artist Dan De Benedictis, but this is only one of the elements involved.

“The only limits to how beautiful a work of art can be made,” says Zentner, ” are the limits an artist imposes on his or her own imagination.” Adding that his band “will continue to work to expand these upward boundaries until its first listener’s heart explodes from the uncontainable ecstasy of it all.”

Zen Land is Zentner, De Benedictis, Tim Young (Guitar), Doug Lunn (Bass) and Vonette Yanaginuma (Harp).

Collectively, the band has performed and/or recorded with members of The Who, The Doors, Guns ‘N Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sting, The Police, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Beck, Frank Zappa, Yes, Peter Gabriel, Mark Isham, Bruce Springsteen, The Spiders From Mars, Seal, Earth Wind and Fire, Kneebody, David Sylvian, Soft Machine, Brand X and many more.

The band is currently adding dates for its first European tour (Summer 2015), along with various festival bookings in Asia.

 

Source: http://zenlandband.com/