Mayan and Epica mastermind (and all round nice guy) Mark Jansen sat down with Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke to talk in depth about the bands upcoming new album, ‘Dhyana’, crowdfunding to enlist an orchestra as well as writing/studio plans for a new Epica record.
On how the initial response to Mayan’s new album, ‘Dhyana’, has been so far, Mark said,
“I’m really overwhelmed, because the first reviews have come in and we saw, I think, twelve or thirteen, and they were all good. Even some ten out of tens. So I don’t know what to say, I’m really happy about it. I guess the hard work is paying off!”
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When it came to enlisting The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra for the record, Mark explained how this came to be.
“The Epica album did set a certain standard and, to be honest, I didn’t want to go back to a lower standard with Mayan. So, I said to our producer, Joost [van den Broek], how can we make this happen? So that the new Mayan album sounds as great as the last Epica album. And then he said, we can make that happen. The only thing we don’t have is a real orchestra. Then I thought, we need to make that happen as well. We just didn’t have the budget to make it happen. That’s why we did the Indiegogo campaign, and fortunately the fans did help us out in a great way, so we managed to do it. We could do the production we had in mind, that we were reaming of. Even with limited resources we could have the production that isn’t less than the last Epica production in my eyes, in my opinion. So I’m a really happy man! ”
Despite lineup changes and rotating live members due to other outstanding commitments, Mayan always manage to persevere, and Mark enjoyed a retelling of one fans account of these circumstances.
“There was one guy, he said to me, ‘I’ve seen Mayan nine times, and none of these times was the same!’ [Laughs] He said ‘I never know what I can expect, all the time, there’s a different guy, but every time I’m entertained!’.
With their book, The Essence of Epica, being their prime focus as it is currently in the making, Mark was also kind enough to share some insight into the Epica camp with regards to a new record.
“At this moment, indeed we are very busy with the book. I am also collecting old pictures that I’ve found on my old computers. I’m also collecting old things that I can find that will also be interesting for the book.” Mark concluded, “Besides that, I wrote one song already for a future Epica release. But we will have a lot of time now, because we will probably hit the studio the end of 2019. So there’s plenty of time to write new stuff. That’s also intentionally like this, that we don’t rush it too much this time.”