Spanner in the Cog
THE Catalog of disaster they faced with their sec album Sharing Space, made Bondi band Cog catch and marvel if they were meant to make it.
Somewhere, somehow, Cog must have angered the gods of rock-and-roll. Such were the obstacles during the making of the Bondi band's second record album Communion Space, frontman Flynn Gower could do little simply joke. ‘‘You bring off on how ridiculous it entirely is,'' he says. ‘‘OK, what force-out is against trying to make this befall?'' Decamped to the studio of producer Sylvia Massy in around middle-of-nowhere Golden State town called Weed, the ternary would wake in the dawn, grab a cup of coffee. . . ‘‘And spell we were acquiring the coffee tree we'd notice out what had gone wrong from the night ahead,'' Gower says. For his brother, bassist Saint Luke Gower, it was like a bad episode of The Osbournes. ‘‘I started touch sensation like I was on a reality-TV show, like somebody was writing this handwriting, because so many things were release wrongfulness,'' Gospel According to Luke says. The circle begin tick off the list of disasters. Flynn: ‘‘We were beholding cars repossessed.'' Drummer Lucius Borich: ‘‘The computer would go down 'cos it had merely one processor. Mortal would make sick.'' Flynn: ‘‘The head of our label got fired. We had no label.'' Gower: ‘‘Then you'd fix it altogether, then it would be the engineer's day away!'' Cog's cult status in Commonwealth of Australia is assured. For 10 years, the trey have been pounding out heavy, atmospheric tunes and performing mind-blowing fete sets. They pierced the Top 20 in 2005 with their debut album The New Normal. The design going away into Share-out Infinite was to spread the message. Massy was offering America: place setting up a label through which Cog's music could at last get a release in the US. ‘‘It was unusual, because we were funding it with our own money,'' Flynn says. ‘‘Merely on paper, it looked like it could very work well. So we coughed up the boodle, went on that point, wrote for around sise weeks, then we choofed away down to South By Southwest. ‘‘It was during that slip that it became blatantly obvious no one at the label had any approximation or experience as to what happened at a label. We were like, ‘Oh my Idol. We've precisely presumption them $US100,000 to release this album'.'' To fray common salt into the wound, the band arrived for their showcase gig at South by Southwest to find everyone had been told the wrongfulness time. ‘‘That was it. We pulled the chaw and said, ‘Give us our money indorse, we're not departure ahead with this release, no way','' Flynn says. ‘‘That sank Sylvia's ship boastfully time.'' The 2 camps were at loggerheads, merely somehow decided to campaign on with the recording of the fresh album, Massy still at the helm. ‘‘The tercet of us went, ‘Well, it's disappointing and it's unfortunate person, just let's simply move on. We've got a record book to make'. Simply I don't think she could,'' Flynn says. ‘‘As time went on, there were other financial ramifications for her, and we watched her whole business go under.'' With Massy in want of fast money, Cog were pushed to the studio apartment backblocks so the swisher rooms could be rented come out to other bands. And as weeks passed, Massy was scarcely turning up for ferment on Sharing Infinite. Despite it completely, the Aussies still make trade good memories of Mourning band. The town provided ‘‘a little flower child oasis in a sea of rednecks'', Flynn laughs. ‘‘I ended up with a baby,'' Borich reveals. ‘‘I simply met a local, hooked up, and created a lovechild.'' St. Luke says ominously:’’Directly he's bound to Mary Jane for the lie of his life.'' And, of course of instruction, Cog managed to come come out of it with Sharing Space, an album on which the striation continue bolt down their unique path, adding just about surprising outside influences. ‘‘You want to be that little blade of grass that sticks up, that's a little bit different,'' Flynn says of the band's deputation. ‘‘We just wanted to produce our possess thing and somehow adjudicate to reach that get the cutting edge of what was occurrent musically in Australia.'' Share-out Space (Difrnt/Universal) out now. Sprocket, Palace House, May 15, $35.30+bf, Ticketmaster; The Gin mill, Bendigo, June 11, $22+bf, locus 5443 4079.
Marc Anthony
