Paul Schütze

Australian-born composer and producer Paul Schütze ranks among the most concentrated and prolific figures in today's experimental electronic landscape. His output consists of successive albums filled with expansive, glacial, and frequently challenging ambient and electro-acoustic pieces, most commonly aligned with post-industrial ambient and isolationist practitioners such as Lull, Main, and Thomas Köner. Yet the meticulous layering and sonic range in his recordings already resist that linkage, even as releases like Site Anubis and Abysmal Evenings feature extended stretches of submerged, shadowy, and strongly cinematic textures, a quality traceable to the years he spent in Australia creating scores for motion pictures. Although he has voiced frustration with the unchecked genre blending practiced by peers in both dance-oriented underground circles and more scholarly experimental domains, his catalog spans industrial and experimental imprints such as Sentrax and Big Cat, the Belgian ambient and techno outlet Apollo, joint projects with ethno-ambient industrial unit O Yuki Conjugate, and partnerships with avant-funk innovator Bill Laswell; despite these reservations, Schütze has steadily integrated rhythmic and percussive frameworks drawn from ethnic musical lineages, having begun his career as a percussionist and pursued formal study of Indian percussion, alongside experimental currents within dance-based electronica.

Born in Melbourne in 1958, Schütze pursued Fine Arts studies at the Caufield Institute of Technology. During the late 1970s he performed as a percussionist in the Fourth Stream Percussion Ensemble and subsequently established the influential 1980s improv ensemble Laughing Hands, contributing percussive and synthetic elements to one of Australia's pivotal experimental acts. Following the ensemble's dissolution in 1983, Schütze served as a film critic and DJ at Melbourne's Hardware Club until invited to compose the score for Roger Scholes' The Sealer. He has since supplied composition and sound design for more than twenty films, among them Assault on Firebase Gloria, Driving Force, Earth Bound, and The Valley. Although earlier recordings appeared with Laughing Hands, Schütze's independent releases commenced in 1990 on the Australian Extreme label, which has since issued four widely praised albums including the multimedia installation piece Deus Ex Machina. In 1994 his initial recording under the acronymic name Uzect Plaush emerged on the Belgian experimental ambient and techno label Apollo, followed the next year by his Virgin debut, the double-CD Apart. Several of his prior works have appeared in reissues on the Big Cat label, among them Site Anubis and New Maps of Hell. Schütze maintains his residence and practice in London.