Meet

WHITE WILLIAMS

WHO IS HE?

White Williams is New York City resident Joe Williams, a 23-year-old graphic design graduate whose primary collaborator is a computer. Which is fitting since the catchy-ass pop songs on Williams' refreshing debut Smoke belong on a dancefloor built for robots. Drawing from a blurry, new-wave realm where punk and disco wink knowingly at one another, Williams isn't shy about discussing his recording process, where hot ideas cool off in the techno chill.

“They're basically just software experiments,” he says. “Some of them were generated algorithmically, where I create a MIDI sequence and then give the computer an allowance to change that sequence based on a percentage. So, I can give the computer a 20 per cent allowance to change what I give it. Conceptually speaking, it's like a filter taking my data, reinterpreting it and then spitting it out slightly differently. There are little tricks like that that keep me inspired and I've developed kind of a partnership with my computer.”

GRINDCORE + TECHNOLOGY = NERD POP?

Raised in Cleveland, Williams cut his teeth thrashing around in noise bands, which, oddly enough, led him to explore computer--generated music. “It was like a noise-metal, hardcore/grindcore kind of band and I played drums in it,” Williams explains. “I was 15 or 16 years old and it was weird because I didn't play guitar but I helped write the songs. It was strange to write guitar parts when you don't play guitar and don't have any sense of music theory.”

Looking to escape the suburban high-school blahs, Williams gravitated towards anything subcultural, from hardcore bands to more avant-garde electronic experiments. Towards the end of his aforementioned band, Williams tried incorporating sampling and drum machines into the mix but his bandmates weren't into it.

“I was just like, ‘I'm going to try to recreate this band on a computer,'” Williams recalls. “That's kind of how I started making computer music and I had no idea what I was doing. In hindsight, no one knew anything about using this software so it was really like hitting my head against the wall until I figured out how these effects really worked and then started picking up real instruments again.”

GIRL TALK ABOUT THE PASSION

Spurred on by his friendship with Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk, Williams first hit the road with an electronic project called So Red, honing his vision through time spent touring with Gillis.

“Gregg has always recontextualized things and I've always been inspired by his music. It's very old in some ways, if you think about musique concrète or something, but I definitely think for a pop medium, it's a new art form for the public.”

White Williams, however, is actually quite accessible, as his off-kilter songs are alien yet infectious. Despite rave reviews, Williams was ambivalent about taking Smoke to the people.

“I'm starting to like performing a lot, but if you'd ask me if I really cared to tour while I was making this album, I'd probably have said no. I didn't want to play a karaoke set when there's so much going on with the record. It just wasn't worth my time, worrying about how this could be interpreted live. Right now we have a portable band – half electronics and half instruments – which is really awesome; we can get on a plane and go anywhere. Having steady guitar, bass and synthesizers, it's been fairly simple to find people who play these instruments and teach them these songs.”

VISH KHANNA

WHITE WILLIAMS PLAYS LEE'S PALACE (529 BLOOR W) WITH BATTLES NOV 10. $15 FROM TICKETMASTER, ROTATE THIS, SOUNDSCAPES, HORSESHOE. DOORS 9PM.

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