Zeal is James Lorenz, a Melbourne-based producer inventing new worlds and crusading future realms through electronic beats. Join me as we feature a local creative here every week - showcasing brave, innovative artists doing cool shit in a city with rapidly growing creative output.
Zeal is more than music, boasting a colourful catalogue of influences with sights set on larger-than-life creative concepts. Off the back of his latest release Time 2 Go featuring fellow young muso Boy Soda, James talks us through his creative inspiration and processes as a storyteller through multiple mediums.
Tell us about the inception of Zeal - how did you first start making music?
I started making music back when I was like 13 (I think) and I had just been introduced to the modern electronic music world (electro, dubstep, etc). I kept researching so much because I was so intrigued by all the new sounds and ideas being presented by the people making these genres, it was all so new and refreshing to my ears, information overload. The Zeal project started a few years after that. I had a few different projects before that were completely different to now, but the Zeal project initially was just me trying new things without my identity attached to it, and I kept it pretty personal for a bit. Zeal was born out of my love of just trying new things and striving to blend all my tastes/interests, after a while it ended up becoming my main focus because everything I put out is a direct link to me.
Zeal is a musical project with an equally heavy visual aspect to it. Do you often begin with a visual aesthetic at first, which then inspires your music? Or maybe the other way around?
Initially this project wasn’t visually tied to the music at all, I started the project to just explore but after time I became so obsessed with the imagery and the idea of creating this universe that blends all the types of music I create. I think it's super important to create this connected web of visual ideas that tie my release together and the narrative of it all. I tend to leave visuals and videos running on one of my monitors whilst creating music now - I have this thing called Wallpaper Engine that has an anime compilation running on all my three screens whilst I do stuff in the background, I find the sudden rush of imagery pretty inspiring. I think I used to find images off Google and do quick edits of them whilst making stuff to have a visual there for me to hold onto as a mental note; now I have this web of ideas where I can make stuff and already know what ideas I can tell Reka, my graphic designer, to tie to it and share the ideas with Nathan who makes all my videos.
You’ve collaborated with a number of friends and peers, including recently having Boy Soda on your track Time 2 Go. How important is collaboration in your creative process - is there a way you decide when a project is going to be solely for you to work on, or is there a stage in the process where you think about bringing someone else in?
Collaboration is like a really super cool way to express ideas but it’s also personal as well because it’s sharing apart of yourself with another person. I love the experience because I feel like it strengthens friendships. Actually in recent times with everything that's been happening, collaborations have been done over Zoom and Discord, and it’s a really new and cool way to work with another person. You’re both in the comfort of your own homes with your setup/personal space but you can both talk and share audio of what you’re working on in real-time, then send the parts over and combine it all.
I generally start almost all projects by myself and I think most projects have some type of collaboration involved, whether it’s just a friend fixing something in the song, Sleep Moon playing guitar in sections or involving a vocalist/rapper. My creative process usually starts with making the chord progression (at least with Time 2 Go and Tomorrow this was the first thing I did), I really like beatsy music like Nujabes so I love the idea of creating a progression you can repeat throughout the song and then add layers that complement it and add to it. When I am working with a vocalist, I like to get a rough demo but not finish the instrumental. I like to show them a rough structure of my idea, share my thoughts on what they could do, then ask them what they think and if there's anything they would change on it. I don’t like to just feature artists, I want them to have a say on things and help make the result more authentic for both of us. Boy Soda and I actually went back and forth on Time 2 Go so much, we just kept wanting to refine it and make it the best we could.
You have one song, one artist, and one album to pick that changed your life - go!
Oh damn! These questions are always soooo tough but I will give this my best go!
Song: Okay one song is way too hard for all time but I think Skrillex - Kill Everybody, this song changed my listening tastes forever! I discovered everything I am into now because of this discovery in 2011, I was just so shocked and intrigued by all these foreign sounds which caused me to spend countless hours just digging through the internet looking for the next new and exciting sounds.
Artist: Madeon for sure! I discovered Madeon via Pop Culture back in the day, all the stuff he’s done from such a young age with launchpads was so inspiring. It was inspiring to see someone use this device and make it very much an instrument for the people of the future! He’s just constantly grown and evolved his sound whilst also developing his madeon world and lore which has deeply inspired my ideas and need to create a world as well!
Album: The 1975’s ‘I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It’ (very long title I know): this album was all I listened to when I was 18/19 on repeat on my iPod. It transcends a pop album and really shows you how they’re not just a pop group/boy band, but have very clever production and lyricism that defies the genre they’re popped into (no pun intended). This double album managed to capture so many of the genres/styles the group has, and definitely isn’t a pop/radio safe album, so respectable from a group of this size to put this record out!
For newcomers to your work, where would you direct them for the quintessential Zeal experience - do you have a certain project or music video you’ve worked on that captures what you bring to the table?
Song: Reminiscent I feel is a very underrated track of mine, it’s not got a visual video but it’s a track of mine I started in 2016 and released the following year on my birthday. I really wanna do a remastered version for shows but I really still to this day love every idea I put in that song. It’s the beginning of the current era of Zeal; Reminiscent, Tomorrow and Time 2 Go are all part of a three-part story of Past, Present and Future, so Reminiscent is the core piece that links the other two together.
Music Video: Well I only have one visual piece/film out, all the rest of my songs I have uploaded on Youtube I just made gifs and looped them haha, but I think Time 2 Go’s video which is coming very soon is something you need to all see! Nathan managed to perfectly capture the energy of that song whilst also only using older footage we had taken in the past 6 months or so. Originally we had lots of ideas including filming with Boy Soda but all our plans got cut short due to Covid-19, worsening before we released the track/during the planning for the release, so we had to improvise.