Xan Müller

Foot traffic in the CBD is down 84 per cent since 2012, venue after venue has faced closure or significantly reduced business, and even the general feeling one gets when they venture out of their own home has drastically changed.

Not that you need to tell all that to Xan Müller, one of the founders of the Surveillance Party label and a musician in his own right. “Honestly, around Sydney, you go to the city and you just don’t feel comfortable,” Müller admits unhappily. “You get left out and there are cliques, and you don’t feel right all the time.”

Müller isn’t simply moaning, mind you – the man is actively working to change the situation, backing up his words with action. For some time now, Müller and the folks at Surveillance Party have been organising and hosting warehouse parties – vibrant celebrations of house and techno music designed to shake up Sydney’s stale scene.

“I just wanted people to show up to our parties and have a good time and feel like they’re welcome,” says Müller. “With [the warehouse parties] we completely ignored the establishment, we ignored the rules, we ignored the law … we just wanted to provide something that was subverting the establishment.”

‘The establishment’ isn’t necessarily a fixed term either, and Müller quickly clarifies that he’s not just talking about the police or politicians. “The establishment might even include certain parts of the music scene as well,” he laughs. “We just never ever [want to] find a situation where we answer to the establishment. And I think as a society we have to do that all the time.”

Müller has long insisted on a ‘no douchebag’ policy at Surveillance Party events (it’s point number two of the regulations when you buy a ticket), but he claims the rule arose from practical concerns rather than any kind of snobbery or actual incidents of violence.

“We had to have this safe zone where everyone felt accepted and happy, because we didn’t want someone grumpy to come in and hurt people and sue us and cause trouble and attract police,” Müller says. “So all that was born out of necessity.”

Müller insists most Surveillance partygoers are gentle, easygoing people anyway. “I think we get a certain type of person,” he says. “They’re people who don’t necessarily feel comfortable in [specific] situations … where they walk into a joint and it’s too cool for them. We do get that feedback from them. We’re not judging them. We’re just there to share music from all of the artists. That’s all we’re trying to do.”

Right now Müller is gearing up for the biggest Surveillance Party event yet: Radar, a huge evening of music and dance in which audience members will have to don a pair of headphones if they want to hear the headline DJs. And they certainly will, given Müller has recruited the likes of creative heavyweights Wonky and Dotmicro, plus live bands No Illuminati and Mirella’s Inferno.

Though Müller claims the guiding ethos of the event is “bums on seats” (“Otherwise we will all go bankrupt,” he adds, laughing), he does admit there is an element of protest to the event, albeit one different from the explicitly political agenda some others have been pushing.

“You know the whole Keep Sydney Open thing? I think it’s been really amazing, the way that [people] have politically activated themselves. There is a really big community of people who … want a positive change for society – artists and punters and lots of people who are halfway in between. All these people are getting together and really politicising and they’re getting active. We’ve been a hundred per cent behind that. But I think that what I want to do is just a little bit different. “I want an artistic response to the lockout laws. We’re trying to share our art.

“I certainly think that music at its heart is often a form of protest,” Müller continues. “It can be so beautifully engaging when it is. We can protest with our music. I just think we need to back up what we’re doing politically with the music. Just to show we have a valid alternative to the lockout laws and the restrictions.”

Even more than that, Müller sees a kind of artistic unity at play within certain sects of Sydney’s music scene; a kind of natural drive and defiance that unites the diverse artists playing at Radar. Though the acts on the bill range from trip hop troubadours (No Illuminati) to experimental, psych-rock electro outfits (Mirella’s Inferno), to a man who plays hacked Gameboys (Dotmicro), they all share a dedication that Müller believes might even be historically significant.

“We’re now [surrounded] by the music that was born out of the lockout [era] in Sydney,” he says, sounding almost awed. “I mean, think about that. You look back on history and go, ‘They were prohibiting music. But look at the music that grew as protest in response to that.’”