For more than two decades, Zane Lowe has occupied a singular space within the cultural landscape, one where musicianship, journalism, fandom, criticism, and emotional excavation blur into something far more unique and beyond a ‘DJ’. From his early years in Auckland making music, to the Record and Cassette Exchange, radio and MTV through to becoming one of the defining voices of Apple Music, Lowe has become less a traditional interviewer, more a kind of musical interlocutor. With a capability of guiding artists toward revelations they perhaps did not realise they were ready to articulate, Lowe manages to connect with diverse artists and never commit genre-cide. In an industry increasingly shaped by speed, virality, and disposable commentary, Lowe remains committed to depth, curiosity, and the strange magic of genuine listening with presence.
When we meet in Sydney ahead of his Vivid Sydney In Conversation event, the interview has not officially begun before we are already discussing American singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan. Naturally, Lowe speaks about him not in terms of music biography, but feeling. “Mark Lanegan makes me feel equal amounts of gratitude and sadness,” he says. “When I hear his music, I always feel very much like I'm listening to someone who's making me realise the preciousness of life, but also doing it from a place where he understands the depths of it too.” It is a fitting beginning. Before the recorder properly settles between us, Lowe is already speaking in the language that has come to define him, emotion first, analysis second.
"When I hear his music, I always feel very much like I'm listening to someone who's making me realise the preciousness of life, but also doing it from a place where he understands the depths of it too.”
Lowe has spent decades translating feeling into language. Not merely describing music, but tracing the invisible emotional circuitry that allows a song to move from one solitary body into another, almost like an osmosis of sound from artist to audience. The archaeological dig for feeling and meaning, and perhaps his former musicianship, is perhaps why musicians so often soften in his presence.
Despite having interviewed hundreds of artists, I’ve never interviewed another ‘journalist’ if that is what one could label Lowe as. “It's rare to be interviewed,” he admits. “It's not something that I often do either. I don't see myself as an interviewer, or even like a critic,” he says. “I'm a musician who's a music fan, who found music, who found a way to get close to it. Who found a way to get to artists.” Perhaps that distinction is precisely what makes Lowe such a singular presence within music media. He approaches artists not as subjects to decode, but as fellow travellers. In an era increasingly dominated by algorithmic attention spans, clipped virality, and frictionless consumption, Lowe still believes profoundly in the power of presence. Not performance masquerading as listening, but genuine attentiveness.
"I don't see myself as an interviewer, or even like a critic. I'm a musician who's a music fan, who found music, who found a way to get close to it. Who found a way to get to artists.”
“I don't go in searching for treasure,” he says when I ask whether he still seeks revelations from artists after decades of interviews, “but I see it when it shows up.” The treasures he describes could be grand artistic manifestos, or more often they are subtle ruptures in language; a fleeting phrase or a strangely chosen word. “Once I realised that being present was the secret, and really listened to what they're saying, truly listened to what someone was saying, that was where the magic was. I then became really obsessed with the granular statement, or a mood, or even just a facial response, or a word within a long sentence, that word was clearly chosen for a reason.” Truly listening and being present recalls the advice I was given – that the key to being interesting, is to be interested. I posit the theory, and Lowe generously agrees. He uses the phrase "giving the artist room to run" – which artists need in order to discuss music. Whilst unofficially confirmed as Laurie Anderson's quote (although I think it should be), "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" – so having the patience to have his artists find their words is essential.
Lowe speaks with the kind of precision that suggests he has spent years studying not simply music, but people. There is almost a literary sensitivity to the way he analyses conversation itself, as though interviews are compositions with hidden emotional melodies buried beneath the obvious dialogue. Over the years, Lowe has interviewed artists operating at vastly different scales and cultural positions, from global icons like Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar to emerging, experimental musicians still discovering themselves in real time. Yet his approach remains remarkably consistent. “I'm trying to find the purpose in every conversation, and where that person stands at that moment in time,” he explains.
“Everyone's like, ‘Oh, you're interviewing KATSEYE?’ Yeah, because KATSEYE are really interesting. They're going through a really interesting time, and they are working really, really hard.”
What interests Lowe is not hierarchy, but devotion. The sheer emotional and physical commitment required to make music at all. “There's a real person who's dedicated themselves to making music,” he says. “Which, as you and I both know, being musicians and being in the music business takes a huge commitment. It's a massive lifelong commitment to do that – so let's honour that from day one.” Honour is the operative word here, Lowe speaks about artists with enormous empathy, but without sentimentality. He understands the emotional precarity embedded within creative life, particularly now. “Any artist will tell you at times in their life, if not for a lot of their journey, it can feel like an under-appreciated pursuit,” he says, and I readily agree. Often it can feel as though the music industry is least interested in the music itself.
“I'm trying to find the purpose in every conversation, and where that person stands at that moment in time."
He grows increasingly passionate as he discusses the way art is often dismissed as frivolous or indulgent labour. “I just don't like the fact that art often gets considered, and music specifically, but I put this in the art category as an overarching experience, [art] gets considered to be ‘play time’.” Acknowledging that Brian Eno did call it ‘play time’ and it is in many ways, Lowe stresses that “ it doesn't mean it doesn't require commitment and love and energy and passion.”
The acknowledgement and even gratitude for the musician’s commitment translates into reflections on its impact on Lowe’s life. “When you get it right, you're not changing my life, but thank you, you changed my life. I've met so many people through music. I have had days that have gone from bad to good because of you. If that's not giving something that is beyond playtime, then I don't know what is.”
Undeniably, Lowe is charismatic and charming, his appeal is vast and I’m curious to know his gift of being universally liked whilst speaking to often diametrically opposed genres of music. Lowe’s secret, philosophy, methodology or approach is both simple and complex. “I put it through the filter of feeling and emotion, really.” He dismisses technicality as secondary. Tempo, plug-ins, melody, aggression, equipment are all truly fascinating and can define a sound certainly, but ultimately not the point. “The unifying element of it is the magic,” Lowe says, “it's the thing you can't actually put into words.” That’s the eternal search that we're probably on, right? Which is why we stay curious, because we'll never crack it.”
"The unifying element of it is the magic – it's the thing you can't actually put into words.”
The irony, of course, is that Lowe has built a career attempting to articulate precisely that impossible thing. “But I don't think I really want to uncover it,” he continues. “The feeling and the emotion, it wants to remain mysterious.” Comparing the experience to Indiana Jones, “do you really want the adventure to stop just because you find the treasure?”
Of course, Lowe’s mythology is also inseparable from record stores. Specifically the legendary Record and Tape Exchange in London, where he worked during the 1990s after arriving from New Zealand and somewhere I remember from my first move to London in my late teens. “I came from Auckland, New Zealand, where I felt like I knew everything and didn't,” he laughs. “That's the folly of youth.”
The job itself, he recalls, was almost impossibly difficult to get. “It was like getting a degree in music.” Initially Lowe was rejected due to what they felt was a lack of knowledge, yet he had something else. “They felt that – and I quote – ‘Most of the people who work here know so much more about music than you do, but they're miserable, and we need one or two people who are going to be nice to the customers otherwise we won't have a business’,” he laughs. He paraphrases the sentiment: “you seem like a nice person who knows just about enough about music.” It feels like a scene from High Fidelity (Hornby’s book, the film or recent adaptation are all acceptable reference points for this.)
“They [the Record and Tape Exchange in London] felt that – and I quote – ‘Most of the people who work here know so much more about music than you do, but they're miserable, and we need one or two people who are going to be nice to the customers otherwise we won't have a business’."
The record store stories spill out of him with enormous affection and this is where we have “released the kraken”. Miserable staff refusing eye contact and putting on records to ruin other staff member’s days, customers unloading beloved collections for rent money and revenge sales involving ex-boyfriends’ records. “It’s such a brutal experience,” he says and with one anecdote that taught him more about business value than artistic value in his career.
Early on, Lowe purchased a mint condition sealed copy of Nirvana's Nevermind for 10 pounds – which if one could find for that price now, I would consider it a miracle. However, his manager quickly chides him, asking how many copies he thinks Nirvana sold of Nevermind, to which Lowe replies, “I think maybe 10 million at last count worldwide”?
“Yeah, there’s a lot of copies of vinyl of that album kicking around, man, that should have been 10 pence!’” Laughing at his younger self, Lowe admits “I was being a fan way before I was being a business person in the second-hand record store trade.”
Still, it was there that his musical world radically expanded. Surrounded by obsessive collectors and deeply opinionated staff, Lowe immersed himself in everything from Krautrock to noise music to experimental electronic records. “A lot of obsession at that time about Can,” he recalls. “A lot of that kind of music was really connecting, finding its way into electronic music, into dance music.” English rockers Spiritualized were equally magical and influential. “Oh man, I remember when Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space came out,” he says, visibly lighting up. “Every single person I worked with at the record store was obsessed with that record.” He remembers the iconic pill pack cover being displayed behind the counter like sacred artefact. “That was the holy grail.”
"I remember when Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space came out. Every single person I worked with at the record store was obsessed with that record.”
The conversation eventually drifts toward vinyl culture now, and the curious way physical media has re-emerged amongst younger listeners raised entirely within digital ecosystems. Lowe rejects purist hierarchies around what constitutes “worthy” vinyl. “If you're a Taylor fan, or a Harry fan, or an Olivia Rodrigo fan, or a SZA fan – if it's a new artist putting vinyl out, holding it, having it, committing to something that feels like it has ownership value to you... to me that feeling that you have as a 21-year-old today is the same feeling I had as a kid going out and buying a record in the 90s.”
To Lowe, collecting records remains fundamentally about identity formation, community and recognition. “It’s the clubhouse,” he tells me – and reveals his ability to identify certain kinds of fans, notably Deftones fans. “I can just tell,” he says, again infectiously laughing. “I love the fact that we carry music in our everyday identity in a way that brings us closer to others and helps us understand ourselves even better.” Perhaps the way music allows us to understand one another, and Lowe’s awareness of this is why artists and audiences trust him? The acknowledgement of connection, commitment, identity and understanding could be vastly more important than citing rare B-sides or clever questions.
“I love the fact that we carry music in our everyday identity in a way that brings us closer to others and helps us understand ourselves even better.”
Over recent years, he tells me, he has returned obsessively to crate digging, rebuilding his vinyl collection with the same curiosity that first pulled him into London record stores in the 1990s. At first he sought out the records that shaped him, then newer artists that felt worthy of sitting beside them, before eventually surrendering entirely to instinct. His advice? “What year is it, and what's the cover like? Take a shot,” he laughs. “Don't even think about it, just learn something.”
It becomes increasingly apparent throughout our conversation that Lowe views music as ongoing relationship – one that evolves alongside identity itself. “Music has introduced me to everyone meaningful in my life and changed my life in every meaningful way,” he says later. “Whilst it's enabled me to really truly understand myself better as I've gone through life.” The simple perfection of this statement, although powerful, causes laughter as the exploration of philosophy is complete, Lowe will need never do another interview on himself again. The manifesto has been made.
In spite of protests for more time and more anecdotes, our conversation ends with suggestions of good local record stores for Lowe to explore. It is the feel-good end to a film, knowing that everything Lowe has said has been in complete honesty and authenticity. His manifesto was not a soundbite but a true, personal philosophy. And one that was about to be acted upon at Sydney's The Record Store, Repressed Records or Red Eye Records. Lowe walks the walk, and spins the wax.
Catch Zane Lowe's In Conversation event as part of Vivid Sydney on Sunday 24 May at City Recital Hall. Tickets are available via the City Recital Hall website.
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