Jol Mulholland’s beats are violent. That first bass drum hits you like a locomotive dragging you across railway-sleeper hi-hats. Tonight’s steam-powered percussion is rolling out of a bulky, veneered drum machine that forms the rhythmic ballast across which Jol lays his melodic rails.
Jol Mulholland with Matthias Jordan in the background. Photo: Georgia Schofield
That guitar shudders like a boiler about to explode, his strumming hand a blurry racing piston. His fretting fingers clasp the flexing guitar neck like rivets about to burst. His mouth forms the shape of a train’s whistle as he sings aloud. The song gathers momentum. Bass player Mike hall shovels on low notes and the fire builds. By the end of the tune Jol’s lost a few bits of fingernail and gained a sheen of perspiration.
The audience take a breath and cheer. I look over at Jol’s long-time friend and engineer at The Lab Studios, Olly Harmer. Every song’s a journey and it’s reassuring to arrive at the platform to see a familiar smile through the steam and smoke. Harmer has a look on his face that says “what’s he gonna do next”!? The answer is a decelerated version of a usually barrelling track of his called ‘Yesterday’s Over’. The tune climbs through a chord change before deliberately chugging past a series of choruses.
For the final crescendo he ceaselessly bangs his strings and the tone is like that of powerful black-smith at the anvil; bending, metallic and discordant. No one in the audience has any idea how this lean, bouff-headed Cantabrian is coaxing that maniacal sound from his humble instrument. Twenty-nine minutes pass and it’s all over, a set punctuated by often profane and sardonic banter.
No two Jol Mulholland sets are the same. If you miss one it’s gone for good, never to be repeated. He’s one of the few musicians in this town who plays with such reliable intensity.
No two Jol Mulholland sets are the same. If you miss one it’s gone for good, never to be repeated. He’s one of the few musicians in this town who plays with such reliable intensity.
The reason we’re gathered here tonight is to catch Matthias Jordan launching his debut solo tranche The Sound Of Asia recorded in close collaboration with Jol. One envies the fun these two had recording together in a cosy pigeon hole of a room called The Oven, perched up a flight of stairs along one wall of the The Lab Studios .
Back at the gig we find Jordan standing at his keyboard. His Pluto and Nightchoir band mate Mike Hall is on guitar for this debut set and Jol has switched to bass. It’s a raw performance thanks to the newness of these songs, but the band hit pay-dirt on the track ‘Forcefield’, a song that let’s Matthias punch in an outrageous synth patch that he plays like a bonkers slot-machine gushing notes.
On bass Mulholland holds it down beautifully and there’s a passage toward the end of ‘Forcefield’ where it feels as though the band are going to rumble right out the front door. It’s another short set that includes a cover of Bowie’s 'Golden Years' and all the tracks from Matthias Jordan’s first solo record The Sound Of Asia which is out now on bandcamp.
LISTEN to an interview with Matthias at his home studio:
Mulholland will be back at Golden Dawn this Saturday night, July 12th, supporting fellow synth-popper Little Bark.
