Mark Sultan Kicks Off His Solo Australian Tour

On the eve of his Australian shows, Montreal garage rock hero Mark Sultan talks to Undercover.

Mark Sultan is a man of one particular talent, producing raw and raucous garage rock and roll, in multiple guises across multiple record labels.

If you know him it could be from cult band the Spaceshits… or Les Sexareenos or Mind Controls or even more recently as part of The Ding Dongs and The Almighty Defenders.

Most prominent of late was his pairing with King Khan for The King Khan And BBQ Show, which conspicuously crashed and burned last year while on tour in Australia.

At the dawn of 2011, Sultan declared that he’d had a couple of shitty years. “2010 was horrible,” he muses to Undercover over Skype. “2009 was probably just me being fussy but 2010 was legitimately horrible.”

Was this because of the very public King Khan break-up? “That sucked,” he sighs, “but that’s just a band. I’m talking about actual things that matter in life that sucked. That was shitty, but it wasn’t the most important thing in my year.”

It makes sense that there was more going on for this incredibly hard worker and tourer. Those who follow Sultan seem disproportionately obsessed with his every movement, but this attention really hasn’t translated to the wider music world.

“I work hard because that’s what I love to do,” he reasons, “I love to make music and tour, but I’m never going to be a monkey and play certain games that allow me to get publicity or get on somebody’s good side who supposedly ‘matters’ because I don’t really give a shit about that. If people wanna find out about me, they will, if they don’t, because they can’t and won’t, it’s my loss and their’s. But I can’t control that.”

“Because of the stuff I play, I might be one of those guys that people latch onto years from now,” he says, “and that’s good enough for me.”

What he plays can almost be summed up as garage rock, except it can’t. There are definitely elements of classic rhythm and blues, gospel, and surf rock, and on his latest album $ he even adds noise and psychedelic sounds.

“I guess when I was focussing on the songs I was making in the last few years, they were for certain things,” he explains, “To deviate from that sound wouldn’t make sense in the context of the band. But these are always influences I’ve had and things I’ve always wanted to explore. I decidedly to do it: reviewers and people be damned. I just wanted to throw that shit in there and see what I could do. I like mixing shit up.”

Australian fans can latch on to the mix now. Sultan is rounding the nation to play tunes from his second solo album (under his name, which isn’t actually his real name) as a one-man band.

He began playing as a one-man band eight years ago, but it has been irregular and only really took off in the last couple of years and particularly again since he and Khan are no longer playing together.  

“I’m well aware of my limitations when I do this kinda stuff,” he chuckles about the solo performing. “The songs that I can play properly are limited. But at the same time I know how to make songs so I can play them in this style or I can convert songs into this style.”

He says he’s recently been sending music to collaborators and they have been telling him “Your timing is really weird”. He says that one of the downsides as a solo performer “is that there’s one ball of rhythm that is my rhythm and that’s indicative of my brainspace.”

Also, other one-man bands that have enjoyed success in Australia, from Seasick Steve to Bob Log, have always incorporated extra elements to amuse the crowd, from storytelling to smutty shenanigans.

But Sultan says he’s likely to eschew the “gimmick stuff” that epitomised the King Khan and BBQ Show (think: banquets and bellydancers). “I’m pretty sure I can hold everybody’s attention,” he chuckles, “I have my own tricks.”  

Catch the one man rock machine tonight in Sydney, and over the next week in Brisbane and Melbourne and look out for a Mark Sultan uSession soon, right here on Undercover.