title: Lucius Borich of 'COG' - by Alex Deegan
date: early 2003
writer: Alex Deegan
COG has to be one of Australia's hardest working independent bands. Averaging over 1000kms a week for the last 8 months playing every conceivable gig, their first EP 'Just Visiting Part 1' debuted at No.2 in the AIR Charts, and the follow up EP 'Just Visiting Part 2' entered the ARIA Heavy Rock/Metal Charts at No.4, and more recently the band has been added to the 'Big Day Out' National Tour in January 2003. Multi-talented co-founder, Lucius Borich, talks about his passion for drumming and creating music....
AD: What age were you when you started playing? AD: Your Dad's a very well established guitarist, how has he influenced you? AD: When do you feel that you started to get serious about music as a career? AD: When you started out did you take any lessons, or teach yourself? AD: In the early years you got all your grounding, as far as playing goes? AD: Was it soon after that when you became involved with Juice? AD: It is interesting to compare the diversity of style of the 2 bands. Juice was a lot more funky, whereas Cog's music is progressive, more along the lines of bands like Tool. AD: Where did you first meet up with Flynn Gower (of Cog)? AD: What made you decide to go overseas, and what was that experience like? AD: Did you know anyone over there at all? AD: You obviously play other instruments? AD: Was a big percentage of Cog's music written while you were overseas? AD: How do you feel about the original scene? Do you feel that touring the country is the only way to get Cog's music out there? Australia's a big place to tour it's not like there's a venue every 3 hours. You can drive 1500kms to play to 40 people and it can be fully heartbreaking at times. But there're also rewards, too. When you do start seeing something happen, clusters of people coming back to your shows, and you start having 2-300 people in every state coming to your shows, you start thinking that the 1.5 - 2 years of hard work is finally starting to break the seal.
AD: How do you guys view Cog and it's music, and also the comparisons to other bands, like Tool? AD: Who are some of your influences? AD: When you do get a chance to practice, what do you normally work on? AD: That must help to solidify your timing. AD: How has your set-up changed over the years? AD:There're not a lot of bands doing what Cog are doing. It' ey and go for what is a little more soul-searching.
LB: Definitely, that's exactly the word: soul-searching. Just trying to fuel that creativity as a human being that we all seem to have, that ability to want to create. It's about playing drums and playing drums differently. To make a crowd say 'Well, what's coming next? Why does that beat sound so different to what I've ever heard before on the radio?' So it's exciting because even if it's not everyone's 'cup of tea', you're creating something different, you're doing something different. I love playing straight music as well, a good groove is a fantastic rush. But in Cog I want to be able to create both elements: where I can be very musical and open and experimental but I can also lay down a driving beat that people can dance to.
AD: What's the next step for Cog?
LB: We have a new single coming out which is a cover of Leftfield's 'Open Up' with extended versions of 'Moshiach' and 'Paris texas of 'Open Up'. We'll also be concentrating on the Big Day Out gigs and starting to write for an album that we'd like to be recording before the end of 2003. We'd like to go overseas and do what we've done here, play independently and try and get some interest from over there. Really pushing our potential
LB: I was 3 when I started to play the drums. Basically, my Dad is a musician so music was all around the house, and he had his band members. For some reason, I don't know why, they just made a little drumkit and I suppose it just went from there. I used to play some 4/4 time, my Dad reckons, when I was around 3 or 4.
LB : He's been a big, major influence, especially when I was younger, because I used to go on tour with him when I was around 8 or 9. I'd go along and set up the lights, and help set up the drums and the sound-checks, and see them play at night. When I got to the age of around 13 or 14 I started playing a few gigs with him, and before I knew it I was on the road touring for a year with him and getting that experience. That was really good.
LB: The first time I got up and played was with a band called 'The Party Boys' that my father was in, Done Perry from Jethro Tull was out in Australia touring with that band at the time. I was about 13 and I played 1 song, a Rolling Stones song, on his drumkit. I thought 'this is a really cool thing'. When I left school at 15, I got the opportunity to play in a covers band called the Rolling Clones. It was with the bass player who did the first 3 AC/DC albums and another guy called Mick Cox who was in Rose Tattoo. So that's when I kind of thought, ' well shit, I'm getting paid to play the drums'. People were going, 'you're not too bad' so I thought well maybe I'll keep at this. It's just something I've always wanted to do.
LB: I'm basically self-taught. I didn't take any lessons at all, apart from maybe asking a few questions of some of my Dad's drummers or just going along watching gigs and seeing other guys play. I was fortunate enough to watch John Watson, Kerry Jacobson who used to be in Dragon, Adrian Cannon he was another great drummer. So all these different guys played with my Dad and they were influential, very much so. Then from there it was more or less going through my father's record collection picking out the albums that I thought were pretty cool and playing along to them. And I also bought a few of those videos, like Steve Gadd, Bill Bruford, and I had a couple of Stuart Copeland Police things, I was really into the Police. So, I used to watch those and pick up some stuff off them. But basically just playing along to records and trying to copy as well as I could.
LB: Definitely. I did a Buddy Holly theatre show, for a year and a half, with a 20-piece band. It was 50's music, 8 shows a week for 18 months. When it came about it took up so much time, so that's all I did. I toured around the country with it, and when that finished I was totally on to original music.
LB: That's right, as soon as I left Buddy Holly, I went straight into Juice, they had been going for 3 or 4 years and they were friends of mine from school. I thought 'this is pretty cool', it was kind of exciting and new and it had some funk music in it, some rock and some blues.
LB: Yeah. I think that's happened through the evolution of my playing; I've found a place, musically, where I really like to be. With Juice, it was very much friends of mine and it seemed like a good idea at the time, and there were some great things to play, but it got to a point where I was like 'this is not really what I want to do'. I felt that musically I wanted to go in a heavier direction, I was getting into a lot of heavy bands, like Helmet, Soundgarden and Sepultura, stuff like that was really appealing to me. Then by the time I got to the end of Juice I went and saw Helmet and I though 'f***! This is what I was loving when I was younger'.
LB: Flynn I've known since school. Since those early days of being 17, 18, that's where we actually met and then he used to come to a few Juice gigs and hang out. I think that was one of the things that stirred him to wanting to become a guitarist actually, seeing us play. We lived in the same area, Bondi, and it got to a stage where they needed a drummer for The Hanging Tree, and I said 'I'll help you out', and before I knew it, I was in that band and having fun. Cog came about when I was overseas.
LB : That was a ummm (pauses) a really weird time, because I'd put so much energy and effort jnto The Hanging Tree and then it broke up. Afterwards I was kind of left wondering and I thought, 'Well I've got to do something, I've got to make a big change'. So I just thought I'd go to America, get out of Australia, see what it's like get a different perspective, see what the music scene's like, see what the players are like. It was a great experience and I started writing a lot of music because I was on my own a lot.
LB: No, just a guy I was staying with and I was working a job over there. I did a few little sessions, that were nothing at all. Basically I was writing music and I wanted to create a band. I thought of a name over there and I thought of recruiting musicians. I found a few people that I thought were pretty good, but that didn't really happen. Then Flynn rang me up from Sydney and said, 'What are you doing?', I hadn't spoken to him for about 8 months. So I told him that I was thinking about putting a band together and that I'd been writing music and needed a guitarist - (laughs) so I asked 'what are YOU doing?'. He said he was in the same boat, he'd been writing too, and that's how Cog kicked off.
LB: Yeah, my father gave me a guitar when I was 13 or 14 and taught me 3 chords. I've never had any lessons at all. Apart from those 3 chords, I've taught myself, and so by the time I got to Juice, I was helping to write songs as well. I love guitar and I love writing music, so it was definitely another outlet for me. When I left the Hanging Tree I actually played bass in a band for 6 months. When I was in Buddy Holly I bought myself a bass and a little studio and that's where I really learned how to play guitar and bass and start to write songs. I started to get into the production side of things because I was working an 8-track. It's really made me focus on being a drummer, in the sense of playing in a band with other musicians. I'm not just thinking about the drums, I listen to the bass and the guitar and the vocals and how it sounds as a band.
LB: My stuff was. I hooked up with Flynn when I got back to Sydney and we kept writing for another 6 months. We basically set about putting it down on an 8-track that we had set up in a rehearsal room. The 2 Cog EP's that have been released were done on that 8-track in the full dinosaur way, it was only ever meant for demos: the idea was to put this stuff down and see if we can create some interest, maybe we'll get a record deal and then we can do it properly. But no-one wanted to know because it was too left field from anything that was going on. So we thought, 'Well what are we going to do now?' People were saying 'it sounds great', so we thought 'let's release it as it is'. And they've done surprisingly well. There's been a lot of touring involved to get it to that point. We've averaged 1000 kms a week for the last 8 months.
LB: : Definitely. There was a point in my life where I thought there're 2 paths I can take: I really love playing and writing original music and being in a band, having that comeraderie and that juice that flows when you create with friends, musical partners. I got to the point where I'm not making any money at all, I'm touring the country, I've been doing this for 10 years. I can either keep doing this or go down the path of playing for whoever, for however much money you want and go down that road. I've had offers left, right and centre to play for money. It was great that people thought I was good enough to do that, so I could have had a much better living standard, money-wise doing that. But in the back of my mind there was always this thing of I just wanted to create my own music, play my own drum parts, working for myself, I guess. Working for other people is never something I would rule out, because being a drummer, that's the great thing you can just go with it and play with whoev er you want. I've had to sacrifice a lot to do Cog, I live back at home. That's the thing that young people have to know, about the whole original music scene: it's fucking really hard. It's great when you're young and you don't really care about money, but when you start getting a little bit older and you've got things you have to pay for, there's a whole other side that you have to sacrifice. I can't do what I'm doing without those sacrifices, because you don't make any money in an original band, all the money goes back into the band. We're paying for everything, and we might look like we're starting to make a bit of a niche for ourselves, but we're not getting paid a cent, we've got bills that we need to pay and it's a really hard thing. It depends how passionate you are and how much you really want to do your original music.
LB: I've thought about it alot. It's a big compliment to be compared to Tool. At first you're a bit pissed off, because everyone wants their own identity and to forge their own path, but people always have to make comparisons. So it takes a while to get out of that until you establish yourself. When people come and see us play because they hear we sound like Tool, they turn around and say, 'Well you're nothing like Tool', but you're creating music that's different, it's not the standard verse/chorus/verse, there's a bit more experimentation going on. You've got to forge your own niche, and time will do that. Every band gets tagged, and if I'm going to be put in the genre with Tool, well that's great because I really respect that band and I really think they are doing something that's fantastic musically and creatively - rather that than Boys2Men (laughs) so it's a good start.
LB:Definitely Stewart Copeland, seeing him play live was a big influence; Rob Hirst of Midnight Oil, he's fantastic; When I was younger I got a little bit more into the experimental fusion stuff like Billy Cobham, Tony Williams; Terry Bozzio really inspired me when I started writing with Cog.
LB: Because of the kind of music I play, I work on my strength. I work on getting around the kit, just trying to get the flow and the feel of my kit so basically I can close my eyes and I'd know where everything is. I like to take in my favourite CD's and play along. For example, the last time I practised I took in an Underworld, Salmonella Dub and a Massive Attack CD and I just play what I like over the top. Having the music there to inspire me to play, not what's on the CD, but use the music like a metronome and to fuel your imagination.
LB : There was a time when I'd go and listen back to myself on tape and I'd hear the fills were rushed or the other inconsistencies. I found buying a drum-machine and trying to nail it to the drum-machine was really good for my timing.
LB: I've gone through trial and error with quite a few things, actually. I used to have a bigger set-up with a few more cymbals, and I've slowly cut that back. I've just got a DW Birch kit, and a Roto-Tom, inspired by Bill Bruford. I've got a couple of Splashes and a Gong, inspired by Rob Hirst (laughs) and it made the lanterns on stage look cool. I've kept with the 1 kit, the DW, and I've found that consistently great. When I did the recordings with Cog, I had quite a simple set-up, the Roto-Tom, the 10, 12 and 16 Toms and 22-inch Kick. That's what I've gone back to, but I've just added another snare on the left hand side, which is the first snare I got when I was 13, from Steve Presswich from Cold Chisel. That is the snare I used on the 2 Cog EP's. I'm really keen to add some Octobans, but I'd be looking too much like Stewart Copeland (laughs).