Issue #013 (March 2006) Steve Law & Zen Paradox Email this article to a friend Zen Paradox Interview with Steve Law by Andrez Bergen It seems that erstwhile Melbourne-based connoisseur knob-twirler Steve Law lurking behind the machines under the alias of Zen Paradox isn’t so difficult to comprehend after all – and in fact he resolved a swag of residual underlying quandaries during the course of a recent rant with Cyclic Defrost. Do you even vaguely recall what you were doing 12 years ago? In my case I had my head stuck in the quagmire of a post-grad history thesis at Melbourne Uni, trying over those 12 months of 1994 to come to grips with, analyse, compress, chew up and spit out 10,000 words on Britain’s industrial music putsch in the ‘70s. In the time since then I’ve conducted a wad of interviews with Steve Law, but the first took place that year. It was for a long-defunct little goth/industrial/electro magazine called Dark Angel. As it turned out, my specific history angle came in useful – Law just so happened to have a hankering for industrial bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, the very same guys I’d recently interviewed in the course of researching my thesis. While fellow Melbourne artist Voiteck Andersen is the will-do enforcer you get to go hassle the party promoter who hasn’t paid up, Law is the shy, unassuming guy that Voiteck probably defers to most in the Melbourne scene. All good yarns begin at some specific point, and the Zen Paradox superhero origin story goes something like this: Rear-vision mirror yourself to 1983, when a young Steve Law – age 16 – discovered industrial music, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and John Cage; he bought his first synthesizer (a Realistic/Moog MG-1), and started producing an array of experimental tapes in the confines of a home studio that included two ghettoblasters, a short-wave radio, and kitchen utensils. After dabbling with an ambient-electro outfit called Guild Of Fire, in 1990 Law helped form the guitar-industrial band Foil and, by 1992 – now more influenced by the sounds of Detroit and acts like Underground Resistance – had kick-started his solo project under the alias Zen Paradox. ‘I was reading a book called Valis, by Philip K. Dick, at the same time that I was trying to think of a name for my techno project,’ Law recalls. ‘The term “zen paradox” was frequently used in this novel, and I thought it was appropriate due to the often paradoxical approach I take to making music.’ Law’s studio had conveniently developed somewhat over the intervening years. ‘At that time I was using a Roland MC-500 as a sequencer, controlling a bunch of MIDI synths – Roland Jupiter 6, Juno 2, JX-8P, D-110, E-mu Emax. I was borrowing things like the TR-808, 303, 202 and 101 until I bought them the following year.’ It was in this upgraded studio set-up that Law produced the baptismal Zen Paradox album Eternal Brainwave, which was first released in 1993 through Ollie Olsen’s new label Psy-Harmonics, then internationally through Kk subsidiary label Nova Zembla in Belgium. ‘I think it still stands up okay,’ Law says of that work a dozen years down the line. 1993 was also the first time I caught a Zen Paradox live set. It was a 3PBS benefit gig in May that year, where he played second fiddle to better known acts (at that time) Snog, This Digital Ocean, and Screwtape. To my mind, this diminutive solo artist hiding behind a stack of rack-mounted gear was the definitive highlight of a night in which the music was great, and the amber fluid flowed rather nicely too. A year later, 1994 was a banner-year for creativity in Melbourne on the techno-electronic front, with people like Voiteck, Arthur Arkin (Hi-Fli), Dave Beattie (Q-Kontrol), Adam Raisbeck (Soulenoid), Derek Shiel and Dan Woodman from TR-Storm (nee-VOID), Scott Armstrong (Guyver III), and the M.P.I. and Lung UPC posses all making their own signature inroads in a constantly morphing scene. ’94 was also the year that local label Dorobo released the excellent (if chronically underrated and abysmally titled) Melbourne compilation Trance/Tribal, which featured Paul Schütz, Garry Havrillay, François Tetaz (as Shinjuku Filth), and Snog/Black Lung illumine David Thrussell, with Pieter Bourke, as Soma. The downbeat Zen Paradox inclusion ‘Between the Apo Kayan and the Infinite’ hinted at a more cerebral artist who was prepared to lock horns with electronica away from the dance floor. Even the title was a little out there. ‘The Apo Kayan is a jungle basin on the island of Borneo,’ Law reports now. ‘The “infinite” part of the title was a reference to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Of course. In April ’94 Steve Law and Voiteck got together for a bit of a live jam at an otherwise forgettable rave party called Mayhem, and their Sonic Voyagers collaborative project was whelped. The outcome? Two studio albums, a couple of memorably searing live reunion jaunts fronting the Zoetrope gigs at the Punters Club a few years later, and a mutual respect that lasts to this day. ‘I know that music … is a necessary form of expression for both of us. I think I have perhaps the most intuitive partnership with Voiteck out of all the people I’ve collaborated with,’ assesses Law now. The list of collaborators isn’t one to be taken lightly – over the past decade Law has worked with Atom Heart, Speedy J, Monolake, Tetsu Inoue, Bochum Welt and Ollie Olsen. Whilst many other Melbourne producers of the mid 90s had disappeared or relocated overseas by 2000, Law was still making stuff as Zen Paradox without the archetypal deejay hype or techno live act fanfare – albums like From The Shore Of A Distant Land (1995), Catharsis the following year, and more recently Experiments In Emotion (1998) and Chromium Dance (1999) through his own label Solitary Sound – as well as cutting a diverse swath of material under new aliases like Mutagenic Mind, Mr. Suspicious, Retreat Syndrome, and just plain Steve Law. He was playing live at the big techno parties like Hardware, but his relationship with Belgian imprint Nova Zembla had ended. ‘Unfortunately they were becoming more trance-focused, while my music was going in a totally different direction,’ Law reflects. ‘[Melbourne] has developed enormously over the past ten years or so,’ Law assesses of the city’s electronic-attuned independent music scene. ‘More experimental and improvised music has been flourishing in Melbourne over the past few years, with festivals like Liquid Architecture, What Is Music? and Anthony Pateras and Robin Fox’s excellent Articulating Space events - as well as regular nights like Make It Up Club. It’s a great city – I’m not sure why, but there has always been a great artistic vibe here.’ There have been drawbacks, however. ‘Ten years ago there was a ton of techno happening, but very little on the electronic improv/experimental scene. Unfortunately the live techno scene itself is not as healthy as it was. Lately at the bigger parties – and in clubs – things have gotten a lot more commercial, and that doesn’t leave much room for live performers who are pushing their own unique sound.’ The result has been that, while Steve Law has no problem finding more abstract electro gigs for himself, there’s been a dearth of opportunities for Zen Paradox – a situation Voiteck also recently complained about. ‘Hopefully it’s just a phase, though; these things tend to happen in cycles,’ Law adds in his usual optimistic fashion. He does, however, perceive another emergent problem. ‘I think the biggest development, not necessarily a good one, has been the gentrification of electronic music. Back at the beginning of the ‘90s it was simply “techno” or electronic music, but since then a huge number of sub-genres have developed, each with their own dedicated following. I think this tends to fragment the scene quite a bit, and unfortunately people have a blinkered approach towards any music outside of the particular sound they’re into.’ For Steve Law, the biggest change over the past six years has been the studio he works with. ‘I’m always learning more about music production,’ he admits. ‘It’s mind-blowing what you can do with a computer these days, compared to a studio full of hardware [back in 1993]. I got a laptop a couple of years ago, which has had a huge impact on my music production. Ableton Live has revolutionized my live performance, and it’s also a fantastic tool for coming up with new ideas for compositions in the studio. It’s also great to be able to use the sounds of the analogue machines and then push them further with computer processing.’ The music he listens to has more or less remained consistent, but whereas a decade ago he was tuning in to Nurse With Wound, more recently he’s espoused the virtues of Cristian Vogel’s latest album Station 55 and his work with Jamie Liddell as Super_Collider. In terms of own music, Law is as diverse as ever. Aside from ongoing solo projects, he’s a member of the Terminal Quartet (with Ollie Olsen and Andrew Garton) and Black Cab, and occasionally jams with High Pass Filter. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of live improvisation with other musicians in recent times, something that I absolutely love doing. There really is a certain kind of magic.’ Back in December Scorn played at the Distorted party in Melbourne, supported by a live act calling itself The Mutagen Server – a newer collaboration project Law shares with Olsen. ‘It was the first time we’d done a one-on-one gig together since the Love Parade in 1993. Ollie and I have been recording a few things together since late last year, and we’re hoping to record an album in the near future.’ Late last year Law also released the most recent Zen Paradox long player, an album called Numinosum, through new label EEM. It was another esoteric title that Law says refers to Carl Jung, to describe “the heightened state of consciousness as a result of a spiritual experience – the sensation of the unknown and the mysterious,” as he puts it. I’m not prepared to argue with that one. The soundscape therein is another matter – this is a body of work you can hardly call straight-down-the-line techno. ‘The album is a pretty diverse exploration of contemporary electronic music,’ says Law. ‘I think you can still see some elements of Eternal Brainwave in the new album, and it’s a pretty good reflection of my approach to techno/IDM, perhaps. I do see each album as a snapshot of where I’m at, at that time. Unfortunately the promotion has been a little slow up to now, so it’s really hard to gauge what people think. Hopefully things are going to start moving a bit more this year. Frank G., who runs the label, has limited resources but I know he’s passionate about the album…’ While electronic music in general is all too obviously Law’s own passion, he readily admits that an oral fixation comes in a close second – and his taste perfectly reflects his audio preferences. ‘There’s so much amazing food in this world,’ he raves. ‘I like things that have an impact - so bland foods definitely don't do it for me! I'm very partial to a really good vindaloo, but then there's Sichuan hotpot, Cambodian raw beef salad, fish and chips from Huskisson in Jervis Bay (with the wharf in Cooktown coming a close second!), mature, washed-rind cheese, mulligatawny soup, kim chi … ahh, the choices, the choices.’