I went out with Spykey last night to see her One True Love, Dan Sultan, play at the Night Market. Spykey, along with every other woman in the crowd, went all gooey-eyed while Dan was on stage, while a crowd full of uncomfortable boyfriends were made to feel inadequate. At the end of the concert, in an attempt to make me feel better, Spykey said I “look a bit like Dan Sultan, but skinnier, shorter, and with glasses.”

Thanks a fucken million, Spykey.

Anyway, after eating some food from the market we went for a walk to kill the hour before Dan took to the stage. We ended up at an inner city bar and ordered a couple of drinks. On the stage at this bar was a gaggle of awkward and nerdlingerly social outcasts getting ready to play a gig. They were doing a soundcheck and Spykey and I couldn’t believe our ears.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Julian Williams via my iPhone sound recording application.

I shit you not, this went on for the whole time we were there and it was extremely difficult not to break out giggling and point rudely. They took themselves so seriously. The best part was that as we left they were getting ready to collect a door charge. Brazen!

So I simply had find out more about this troupe of freaks.

Hello, My name is Julian Williams and I’ve been doing my thing in music and experimental theatre in Melbourne for years now, how they go so fast.

[...]

…there are conventional instruments like guitars, organs, and wind instruments. There are also sampled everyday sounds from around the house, generally slowed down or speeded up, and then harmonies galore. It reflects my taste in music from the Beach Boys to Pauline Oliveros, although the music I listen to is all over the shop, so it’s hard to make comparisons. The byways of this musical world are as varied as a china polluted stream.

[...]

Lyrically, I’m writing about my usual interests: spirituality, meditation, understanding humans role in the universe, various rites and ceremonies of tribes in Africa, South America and Asia. Yep, I love the arcane and esoteric landscape my fellow beings. The process of writing lyrics is weird. It’s like I’m the antenna catching vibrations, or like a radio picking up frequencies in the air. Even I don’t know what they mean most of the time. I like to give each listener the opportunity to make their own meaning. I don’t consider myself the author of the work, just the facilitator. My feelings about the album are no different to those reading this. The power of mystery is a great thing to be enjoyed by husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mums and dads, and every being with ears.

I don’t consider myself the author of this warning never to subject yourself to a “concert” by Julian Williams, just the facilitator.