Fifteen minutes with: Mark Sultan

 Mark Sultan has a musical genealogy stretching back to Montreal misfits the Spaceshits, last visited Australia as part of the King Khan & BBQ Show and released solo records as BBQ before using his own name.

yourGigs (yG): How differently do you treat recording when doing it under your own name?

Mark Sultan (MS): I put out two albums under the name BBQ and one other under Mark Sultan. The BBQ ones were pretty much live, one take, one man band recordings. The first Mark Sultan album was kind of one man band stuff with a few overdubs and kind of inching toward a full band type thing and then this new one is full band sound with lots of psychedelic effects and stuff like that

yG: When you are writing songs, do you just give each song the setting it needs to give it its own potential – or do you consciously think – this is a band song, this is a solo one?

MS: Well I don’t set off in that mindset, but when I am coming up with songs; I know half way through trying the song out in my head which way it is going to go. Lately everything I’m writing in the last three months – I’ve recorded like 30 songs in the last month – I knew they were going to my own project – just be Mark Sultan, or whatever it is I am going to call myself on my next album. So that wasn’t so hard, but there was one stage where I was in four different bands at the same time but I would definitely know where they would go when they were being written and it’s not even the orchestration or what is feeding into the song or the vision of it or how many instruments, right now I’m just putting everything out in my name, I don’t give a shit.

YG: Is it a rare thing that you do get bursts of lots of songs all at once like that?

MS: I guess some people sit down and make an effort and go ‘ I’m going to write songs’ or whatever I think for me it was just that I was in the mood, I was just drumming, and playing guitar, and it just comes out like puke, like *blergh* and it just doesn’t stop, no actually, I compare it more to diarrhoea, uncontrollable and it’s kind of satisfying, you know when you have it you go this is kind of good somehow, but then you are like ‘make it stop’ it wouldn’t stop so it just kind of kept coming so after a while I actually had to put a cork in it, seriously, and I was just like ‘I’ve got to stop here, I’ve got 35 new songs’ it’s too much, I didn’t want to dehydrate myself at that point. There is a time and place and I usually do not make an effort to find that time and place, it just kind of happens.

YG: Do you find when they do come out all at once, that the spontaneous energy of the songs are a good thing to capture or are you one to dwell over songs and try and perfect things? 

MS: It depends on the style I’m using in the recording if I’m going to be  a one man band set up in the recording I’d much rather it be just the one take.  I prefer that stuff and I like the immediacy of it and the fact I haven’t tried put anything else on the song and just let it be, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. sometimes I really like writing stuff and, well I wouldn’t say perfect, because nothing can ever be perfect, but trying to get it to match my vision and make it come to fruition and make it into something I really want it to be. I spend more time on some things that I do others, sometimes I just listen to a song and just love it and want to spend more time on it, it’s usually just vocals, I’m really harsh on some of the vocals that I do – it sounds really fake or sounds really white or sounds really shitty, I don’t know, usually I’m pretty chilled when it comes to that stuff.

YG: You used a number of guests on your latest album, how do you approach things differently when you are collaborating?

MS: Well definitely when I’m collaborating and to a point where the person who I am collaborating with is jointly responsible for the actual song it’s different because there is a responsibility on each person’s behalf to accept ideas that somebody else is putting forward. Now you may not agree with them, and say I don’t like this and then work on it some more until it becomes you know a baby. Or whatever, you know, you are basically creating life. For example I wouldn’t want  - ah, I won’t make dumb analogies about jizz – I think if you are working with somebody on a song you have to be responsible adults, almost like a relationship and you work until you have the perfect thing you want and then you’re happy. But for instance if I was collaborating with somebody who was just laying down some guitar or putting some horns on or something like that it becomes a dictatorship because I know exactly what I want and the song itself – like if somebody made a Michael Jackson shirt for my baby, I would say, no I don’t want Michael Jackson on my baby. You want these people to help you and you really love what they do but you really want them to have their own input and you want them to be creative but there is a point where I’m like okay can you kind of do something like this and end up producing at that point. But when I’m the one laying down the stuff, I’m pretty much at their mercy and I love having them tell me what to do and seeing if I can do it.

YG: Do you find it hard to switch between a role within a band to your solo guise?

MS: No, it’s like two different things. The absolute husk of the song writing is going to remain the same, if it’s more people putting clay and breathing life into the husk it changes it a bit but ultimately that husk is mine and my fingerprint is on it and that baby will have my we face somehow.

YG: you have had a lengthy career been in lots of bands and got to tour the world – did you ever set out to achieve that?

MS: I just realised early on that I didn’t want to work a normal job, I’ve always been kind of a – well I grew up a little punk piece of shit – I still believe in that ideology and the ethos is still with me somewhere in the back of my head. I just didn’t want to spend my days working some dumb ass job I didn’t like and I really did love music since I was a little five year old so I just started pursuing it not in a way like ‘I need to make this my life and career’ I just put more energy into it and really found myself enjoying the reward the repercussions and whatever I work on, even if it was a square job I didn’t like, I’d still be a hard worker and it all just builds up into what it is. Obviously I’m not a success story, I’m still a fucking ant on an island but I find I do have success in that I can travel to somewhere like Australia and play shows for people who might know my music and that to me is what it is all about. Like it doesn’t matter about riches, it doesn’t matter about having some taste makers tell you ‘you’re okay’ because I don’t give a shit, I just d what I want to do and I’ll do it my way, because that’s all I can do, I do what the fuck I want whenever I want.

YG: do you still find there’s some influence from your earlier work comes into what you are doing now and how does what you are listening to effect how the sound comes out?

MS: The earliest stuff that I ever put onto record has got similarities; it’s kind of the same as what I do now. I’ve always listened to the same genres of music as when I first started making music, except for some I started looking into more than others. Like I would start to listen to more avant garde or jazz maybe 12 years ago. So everything is in place, that being said it’s not one genre or two, it’s that of music forever. Maybe I just felt earlier on more hesitant to introduce those elements and now I really don’t care and I just want to play and if it’s okay it’s okay, I can’t control anything except what makes me happy.

YG: You bring a lot of elements of music of the past into what you are doing – what is it about that music that you think is lacking in music being made now?

MS: I do believe Rock ’n’ Roll in its purest form is a magical music, it’s very sexual, it can be violent, it can be loving, romantic, it can make you feel really negative, the emotions are all there and it’s not contrived its very basic immediate music that can be made by anybody without skill or with. And I think that’s what is lacking now for the most part in music. Back in the days I am talking about there was some pretty bad bands, there were people trying to make it but the industry was different the people making music were from a different place, society was different, and its reflected in that music. I think that it’s definitely a tradition as far as this immediate, animal, visceral, sexual music that isn’t relying on a lot of the trappings that music relies on now. I don’t know, I just think I love the sound of the music. I love the fact that it is based on very primitive beats and it’s not trying to be heavy handed and it’s fun and these are really basic things that drive people to do – you can have a song that’s one chord, you can make a melody that’s so obnoxiously amazing and it touches everybody if it’s got the right beat or its got this little thing. It can have so many basic little things that crush monotony without throwing 42 tracks of shit on top of it and having a fucking vocoder go nuts. I think people have lost sight of what’s important.

YG: What were your recollections of your visit here with the King khan & BBQ show visit to Australia and the aftermath of it?

MS: The Opera House asked us not to do certain things, out of respect. Even if a request is really silly, I have respect for people’s things and possessions. Sure the show was at their Opera House and I don’t think they would have invited us as the Opera House, we were there as part of a big thing that was going on, and I think we reacted poorly and we were disrespectful. I don’t blame them, due to the way we acted, I mean it’s the Sydney Fucking Opera House; it’s not Joe’s Shithole you know. I get it; I have no ill feelings at all. I think we were experiencing a lot of personal problems as a band and shit just went down horribly and if anything I rue the day we went. As much as I can regret anything I am saddened by how that shit went down.

YG: It must have been a thrill initially to have been handpicked by Lou Reed for the Vivid festival and have him in the audience?

MS: I mean fuck yeah! Before we had done it all our friends, even family, and I mean, I love Laurie Anderson also, and these people ask you to play, not only we were the first band asked they could think of as fans and also to get to play the Sydney Opera House in Australia, you know, it’s crazy. We were so stoked and that was the main horrible part of this whole thing that instead of impressing them , instead of giving thanks, for your music and giving them the energy back that they deserve as people we admire we kind of just shit on everything, yeah, horrible. And it sucks, it really does suck, it could have gone another way and it really didn’t and it’s embarrassing. But you know, shit happens.

YG: Do you and King Khan have any plans to record together in the future?

MS: King Khan & BBQ is on hold, but I think – the problem is that our reactions in that band – it wasn’t just in Australia, it was a lot of things, we are this tiny band of two retards who are playing stupid Rock ‘n’ Roll music and I don’t think we ever thought that people would give a shit about what we do. Not only do they give a shit and not necessarily in a good way, because there were people like making up internet news and writing a lot of disparaging shit and trying to cause problems – and does that happen to Tom Hanks? I just find it really ridiculous. So a lot of things we would say off the cuff would come out and almost come back to warp our opinion of what we were doing, like it came back to affect us and if we said: ‘oh the fucking ban’s over, fuck this shit’ I mean that kind of shit gets said all the time, but when it gets thrown back in your face from a thousand different people on the internet in an accusatory manner then you start thinking you know the band IS over. But guess what, the band is never over and we’re fucking blood brothers and maybe we’ll be back, maybe we won’t, but I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll be back.

YG: Do you still have any unrealised ambitions for your music are there still things you want to try?

MS: No. I’m very content just making music that I shit out from my soul and having it turn into a magical beast. I don’t have any ambitions, I don’t have any goals, if they happen they happen, if they don’t they don’. I’m going to still keep making music as long as I can. Even if there is only one person left in the world who likes my music I know that that is the thing that drives me and the thing that makes me happiest, so that’s my only ambition to j

ust continue doing what I’m doing.

YG: What can we expect from your shows?

MS: People will be surprised. My role in the King khan & BBQ Show was a limited one that I chose, being the opposite to Khan’s persona, so people may think it will be this brig show or whatever, and I think if I put my heart and soul out onto the stage I expect people to eat it and shit it back out at me so I can smell it and we can puke together it will be good times.