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 Melbourne-based MC JULEZ raps about everything from stegosauruses to self-doubt on his new EP. JANEWORLD catches up with him to trade words of wisdom before the upcoming launch.
Many worthwhile messages sound trite when put into hard copy; think affirmative fridge magnets and Magic Happens bumper stickers. When, towards the end of our interview, Julez drawls “If it feels unnatural, don’t do it”, frontal lobe sparks ignite but the hand hesitates over the keyboard. It needs context. He’s talking about hip hop and past tendencies of some Australian artists, who served self-importance without ever having struggled like their (predominantly) African-American counterparts. “Hip hop comes from a very battle-based culture where braggadocio is an important thing, but that self-aggrandisement was a reaction to how those artists had been treated by society. That’s why we have to be careful in Australia, we have to consider these things…” He sounds serious, very serious for an artist who launched his EP in Melbourne with a barbershop quartet and donned a wig and a crucifix while performing the title track. Julez (Julian Gregory) formerly stomped the streets of Brisbane, moving to Melbourne in 2005 when a larger scene called. His performances are more eccentric and iconoclastic than most, yanking threads from the underbelly of independent hip hop and stitching them into characters that tramp alongside work by artists like Buck 65, The Antipop Consortium, and Tom Waits. His new EP, Passion Of The Julez, was recently the Triple J Unearthed album of the week. It lays out four tracks that hit the ground running and mellow into a slow flow of introspection over dark-shrouded scratches; the first half dances around material and spiritual desires, the latter two tracks seem to shrug off the costumes and reveal the artist’s actual thoughts over clean and clever beats lent by DJ Sizzle. Passion grabs the baton from Julez’ earlier releases and passes it towards a new avatar, one who seems more concerned with their personal path than tripping up the greater public … oh, and then it plays over again before you have time to think about switching discs or hitting ‘repeat’. “Yeah, I decided to do that. I thought it was funny.” Julez responds to the fact that the second four tracks don’t sound like remixes. “Exactly. That was meant to happen. I was thinking that if I play an album and it gets to the first track again I just let it play again. We thought it would be a funny thing to do and we decided to do it … the night before it got mastered.” The Brisbane launch of the EP will lack the theatrics of its southern counterpart, but promises its own ‘variety show’ atmosphere with performances by The Tall Man Sound System, Sampology, and Potato Master, as well as an urban art show, b-boys and b-girls. Tall Man is one of Julez’ side projects that he describes as including, “Turntable trick sets and beatboxing sessions, freestyling and solo songs interweaved into one big ugly mess.” The kind of big ugly mess you could actually look forward to on a Saturday night.
JULEZ launches PASSION OF THE JULEZ alongside Elf Tranzporter’s Ethereal Lotus Fleet this Saturday July 26 at The Valley Studios from 8pm. The gig is BYO and costs $18.
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