It is amazing how more often than not, less is best. I think Cogs is a perfect example of this. When I look back on this album, nearly a year after it was recorded, I see it for me (JP) as being a proving grounds of sorts, where I was hell bent on showcasing how good I was at guitar. Cogs is a song that is able to grab people's attention without having too much going on, something that really taught me a lot about writing and playing music.
As with a lot of Cairo songs, this one found its beginnings in bedroom jams between myself and Dan. The keyboard riff at the beginning is what really got the ball rolling on this one, and really holds the song together in my opinion. When I play my guitar parts without the keys, they sound terrible, but somehow work perfectly with what Dan is playing. Engineer/producer Paul Boechler added some interesting percussion at the beginning of the song, having recorded an alarm clock (think Pink Floyd "Time") and the sound of his bike's freewheel spinning (before he became a fixed gear kind of guy). Mark's guitar part for this song has always been free form, which adds a neat charm to the live interpretation, and he had a lot of fun tracking this one through a "chaos box", an interesting piece of equipment the studio had kicking around.
This song also holds a special place for me as one of my best friends of 22 years, Brandon Velestuk, added a third guitar track, which begins around 1:10. It was a cool experience to work with him in a musical context again, especially considering he had recorded in the exact same studio ten years prior with a band we had played together in (but at that time I was no longer a part of it). We basically threw him in the live room with a guitar and let him do his thing, and it turned out really rad.
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