Local indie rock group TAPE/OFF are about to give birth to their second musical child. DARRAGH MURRAY catches up with drummer BRANKO COSIC to chat about the recording of their new EP, B-grade film and drumming like a Muppet.

Branko Cosic is at home recovering from surgery. While his operation sounds uncomfortable, Cosic remains upbeat and keen to chat about Tape/Off’s forthcoming EP …And Sometimes Gladness, the follow up to the group’s well-received 2010 debut, Unreel Unravel.

“With this record we’ve gotten a lot dirtier. We’ve experimented with more distortion and overdrive on vocals and a hell of a lot more reverb as well.” Cosic says, “We’ve been listening to a lot of Can, the old German krautrock group; that, and My Bloody Valentine.”

Most of the tracks developed from recording sessions held on a farm owned by his aunt and uncle in Jimboomba, the band setting up in an old tin shed and using the rural setting to give the record a more dynamic sonic environment.

“We wanted to record sounds on the farm as well. There’s drum tracks where you can hear bird chirping into the mics. Actually, one day my uncle was out chopping wood. He had two chainsaws right next to him, so I said ‘dude, I want you start both of those up and we’re going to have a mic right in the middle’, so there’s stereo chainsaws going on as well.”

Initially planned to be the group’s debut record, time constraints meant that this goal might have been ambitious. Cosic explains:

“The idea was we were going to go out and do an album with Ed Guglielmino. We did the first EP and that was really good and then Ed was like ‘fuck it, lets go straight to an album’ and we had the material but didn’t really have a time frame.”

Fortunately, these time pressures did not manage to disrupt the group’s sense of humour, even reaching towards B-grade Hollywood for inspiration.

“There is one song that’s going to be on the EP … called Hell Comes To Frog Town. It’s called that only because I wrote that song on a weekend I had off and when I tend to write songs, I just got to call it something I just watched or after some event that just happened, and there was this B-grade movie I just watched called Hell Comes To Frog Town on. Hell Comes To Frog Town? How the fuck did they think of that? How many amphetamines did they take?”

Finally, I ask Cosic for comment on his reputation as an intense live drummer, pressing him to confirm whether lofty comparisons to the likes of Animal from the Muppets are accurate.

“Definitely man. Usually at the smaller the venue that we play, I’m always bringing my stupidly large drum kit and the other guys are like ‘dude, did you really have to bring those drums? I think you’ll have to play lighter tonight.’ Usually when they say that, it makes me want to play even fuckin’ louder.”

TAPE/OFF launch …AND SOMETIMES GLADNESS at The Zoo on Saturday Sep 3, with support from Sleepwalks, Esteban Vihaio and M.O’Neill. See www.tapeoff.net for more.

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