Interviews : Cog (Luke Gower) – 17/06/2009

MetalObsession recently had the chance to chat to Luke Gower, bassist of prog rock band, Cog. Its a few weeks away from starting another run of a Cog national tour. I had to find out what the band was up to at the moment. “At the moment we’ve just been rehearsing. And getting everything up to scratch, we’ll be trying to pull out some new ones we haven’t played before, and some of the old ones as well. So it’ll be a nice mix”. Cant complain about that.

Cog are one of the most thorough bands when it comes to touring Australia. Its very rare you’ll see a Cog national tour just sticking to the capital cities. This tour, possibly the last in Australia on Sharing Space, is no exception. “For the bands that are starting off I think its very important”, says Luke, “I still think its important for a band of our size. The people in those sort of places rarely get these type of events, [and] when a band does come to a town like that you generally get quite a warm reception and they’re really out to have a good time. We’ve always tried to make it a point to go out to not only the city’s, but the rural places as well. I think we’ll continue to do that. Obviously financially it becomes a concern somewhat because you go to those places and we wanna put on the same show that we put on for the people in the city, and sometimes you just can’t do that with the facilities there.”

Cog has been playing Sharing Space for a while now, starting back in November 07, so looking back on the time that’s been, I wanted Luke’s opinion on Sharing Space, and how it compares to their back catalogue. “I think its been a bit more widely received.” Luke continues. “I think there are a few tracks on there that have broken through some sort of a threshold, that’s allowed us to gain a bigger fan base, that’s been great ya know”. Judging from the venues the bands been playing, I think their fan base has grown as well. “Comparing it to the new normal, well, the New Normal kinda put us on the map. It opened a lot of doors for us. They’re just 2 different kinds of albums, and I think Sharing Space is just more accessible to the average listener.”

The first time I saw Cog was at the Big Day Out Festival. Unfortunately I missed their last headlining tour, but at the festival they put on a great show. So what does Luke prefer, headline shows, or festivals? There’s always a new fan in the crowd waiting to be converted at festivals. “I think I prefer playing our own shows, sound wise. When you’re in a room, the sounds trapped. There’s a different vibe. But I personally love playing the big festivals as well for the reasons you just said, there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t heard cog, and its a great opportunity to get your music out there, and put on a good show… But there’s positives and negatives of both. When you’re playing a huge stage outside sometimes the sound is terrible… there’s wind and there’s other types of sound”. Personally I thought their sound at the Big Day Out was great for a festival. Luke continues “its definitely a hard one to crack mate. When there’s wind it just becomes a nightmare for the sound guys. I think there’s some that are really good at it, and there’s some that just don’t get it. We travel with our own sound guy, and lighting guy. There’s about a 5-6 group crew. We pay a lot of attention to that kind of thing. We are a 3 piece band and to anyone that has seen us or heard us, they immediately think ‘fuck, how hard can it be? Drums guitar and bass.’ But there is so much more going on. We literally don’t have room on some desks for all the channels. We spend a lot of time and a lot of money buying all this gear, and acquiring gear to make these sounds, and you obviously don’t want to get there and it sounds like shit. And especially if you’re coming to see a cog show in a venue, we’ll go all out. Constantly trying to look how to improve our show with visual and audio.”

Having only seen a Cog show from photos, its still something that I want to see in real life. Well, a headline show.  Luke says on the topic “yeah, we’re fortunate enough to have a really good, passionate lighting guy called Jeff Bails who’s just a freak ya know. He’s constantly looking and searching for new and better lights or new ideas, something to keep it fresh.” A live DVD might pass the time before I can see them again. How about it?! “I think you’re right.” Luke agrees, “No real plans as of yet. We tried to put one together a while ago, but it just didn’t turn out. Hours and hours of footage of both new normal and sharing space, and tour footage, and all sorts of stuff, but, I think cog is a band where unless its right, unless its what we want, we don’t release it… We’ll get there one day [laughs]”. I hope so, I hope so.

For this extensive national tour Cog is bringing an international support from manchester in the Uk, Oceansize. It doesnt happen very often, but it’s good when it does! “We’ve been trying to bring out an international band for a long time now, its been something we’ve wanted to do. A bit of a flip deal if you like. You bring a band out here of similar size or nature, from overseas, and you put them in front of an Australian crowd, and play 10 shows here or whatever it might be, and you go there and they put you in front of their crowd. That’s the kind of thing that we’ve worked out. And Oceansize just happen to be the bad that were willing to do it. And its great cos they’re a good band, they write good music, and they haven’t been to Australia before. Its in a similar vein, I think the cog fans will appreciate it, and I hope they do cos its been a fucking shit fight to try and organise it all! And I haven’t been organising it, I just hear it off our tour manager and so forth. He’s worked his arse off, so I hope everyone enjoys it.” You heard the man.

Does the Cog camp have any locked in dates for the flip side of the tour? “Nah, not as yet. They’ve got their schedule, just like us. And that involves stuff in between this tour, and what is hopefully the start of what will be our European tour. But I think we’re gonna take a little bit of a break after this tour and just have some time off. Its been 10 years for cog without a full on break. I think everyone deserves one.” That times gone quick from the outside, how about inside the band? “In here its gone even faster. I cant believe its been 10 years, it feels like I’ve just left high school.”

Last year in July Cog joined Shihad in the UK for two shows together, one at the infamous Shepherds Bush Empire in London, and one at a festival in the north. What were these experiences like for the cog boys? “It was great. We were fortunate enough to play a wicked venue over there… There’s been some unbelievable bands that have gone through those doors, I was just happy to be there and finally go that monkey off our back, of playing in London. I’ve always wanted to do it. It looked like the people liked it, but its hard to judge, I’m guessing half the people at least were from Australia, its hard to tell whether you’re breaking new ground or anything. We had some cool things happen though. We were in the tube coming back from Soho, right in the middle of London, and there [was] a whole school class, running down the tube, and we were just walking up to catch a bus, and their teacher just came up to us and stopped us and said ‘you guys are cog aren’t you? You guys are the best band in the world, came and saw you yesterday, I cant fucking believe it! Where have you been!’ and that was just in the middle of the tube with some school teacher who’d gone to a festival that we played at over there! [laughs] to get those little bits of joy, it does make you feel good. Like we’re making some new ground and getting it out there.”

So what’s the plan for Cog now? A break? A new album? Hit up Europe? A bit of all Luke says, “Its always been to try and get it overseas. For the most part we’ll just keep on writing, whether its by ourselves, or all together, and we’ll continue to plug away. We just feel a breaks in order.”

When your open with your political views, it can put people off a band. I wanted to know if Cog were afraid of that happening or not. “not really mate, its just a point of view. There’s plenty of people out there who will disagree with you, but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t stay if they like the music. At the end of the day its just a view, and everyone is open to that. Hopefully they don’t leave because of that, cos its about the music, and if you enjoy that, I don’t think its too much of a reason to go, everyone’s just got different opinions”. While on the topic of politics, I was sure when listening to the album that it was about the political situation in Australia in 07, with the upcoming elections at the time. I was surprised to hear that it in fact, wasn’t. “I think you weren’t the only one surprised there.” Luke says, “Like literally we were in a room, we had our computers and what not, but I didn’t watch any televisions, or read any papers. We had a job to do, and that was obviously to record the new album, and do the best that we could do with the time that was given, the money that was spent. We are politically minded, especially the other 2 in the band, I’m a bit more laid back we just didn’t have any type of contact almost with the affairs of what was going on with Australia at the time.” I guess that was the idea then, get away from everything going on in Australia, and stay locked away till the record is done, and focus purely on that. “Initially it was meant to be 4-6 weeks writing before, well, writing/pre production, and that 4-6 weeks turned into 3 months. So that’s what basically happened. It was extremely productive. We wrote 12 songs in that 3 months, we wrote 12 songs in a year here. You can see how productive it was in a room with your gear set up all the time. Just waking up at 10, walking in at 11, and walking out at 11. that was basically our day for 10 months.”

I was never known for my maths in High School, but I can do the maths that 24 is more songs than what was on Sharing Space. We want B Sides damn released damn it!  “Yeah, we did. We had a few. But I think that’s also what incurred more money, trying to record 15 or 16 songs. We do have other songs that we did record, but they’ll probably be released at a later stage.”

The last album released by Cog was the re-release of the 2 debut eps, Just Visiting Part, and Part 2, as Just Visiting. How Important was it for the band to get the album out the way it was initially intended? “It wasn’t extremely important, we had a deal with Destra that came up and had a chance to re-release it, so we went back and remastered it, and thought why not release it how it was intended back in the day, it was initially recorded as an album, but then it got split up into 2 eps, which became JV1 and 2. it was an old idea turned new again. It was recorded as this body of work, so why not release it that way. I thought it turned out great, and sounded really good after being remastered.” Completely agree about the sound, and the extended Bondi is a nice little treat as well. “yeah, well there’s long and short of everyone of our songs these days”. An extended No Other Way would be nice! “[laughs] Nah, that’s the only version there”. Ah well, I can dream.

For now do yourself a favour and check out the band with Oceansize and Calling All Cars touring around the country.

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Band: Cog
Date: 17/06/2009
Origin: Sydney, Australia
www.myspace.com/cogmusic

Questions: Scott Boelsen (Metal Obsession)
Answers: Luke Gower (Bass)