Second Language

Brisbane indie outfit Tape/Off have been stalwarts on the Brisbane scene for years now, building both a fervent following and a solid reputation on the back of two EPs (2010's Unreel Unravel and 2011's ...And Sometimes Gladness). Now, after a seemingly interminable wait, they've finally unveiled their debut full-length, Chipper. “We were after something pretty different,” explains drummer Branko Cosic. “I think the two EPs were total accidents with the chips falling as they lay, but with the album we knew that we definitely wanted to concentrate on it more. There was a period when we were going for a grant to go to San Francisco to record with Jay Pellicci who used to do all the Deerhoof records. When we didn't get the grant we started doing demos at my place because that was our HQ, with a mind to go somewhere else for the actual recording. But then those demos started turning into album tracks.

“They way it was written ultimately wasn't that much different to how the EPs were done, although there's nothing conventional about the way Tape/Off write and record. Nathan [Pickels – vocals/guitar] will come over to my place and start chugging on some riff, and I'll open up ProTools and say, 'I'll give you a click track, just make up a structure and we'll figure it out later.' He'll do that and I'll quickly put drums on it and a dummy bass and it goes from there. Although now with the new unit – with Cam Smith on bass and Ben Green on guitar – we've started writing songs in a room together, which is really working well. Beforehand we all had full-time jobs and it was hard trying to pin everyone down to write a full song and get it down enough to go to a studio.”

According to Cosic Tape/Off's recent line-up changes have really consolidated the band's aesthetic. “This is probably the most realised version of Tape/Off. When the band started it was mainly Nathan and I – Luke [Zahnleiter – guitar] came along pretty early on, and Brenton [Maybury – bass] came a few weeks before our first gig at The Hangar. We weren't really from the same scene or musical upbringing; Luke's totally into the really wacky Deerhunter records, whereas Brenton was a typical '90s punk going to Warped fest and things like that and Nathan and I were just big Pavement and Fugazi fans and the like.

“Jams were really awkward because there'd be all these different ideas trying to claw together to make something cohesive – sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But when the line-up evolved I think we read each other a lot better now in the room. We're starting to talk our own language, which I'd heard about so many bands doing in the past but never quite understood, but now that we understand each other a bit more I totally get that.”