Floating Me

Wed 31st Aug, 2011 in Features

Floating Me may just be the band destined to take progressive-rock in Australia into a whole new atmosphere of sonic dynamism. The Sydney band is, after all, driven by a drummer who was always destined to become one of the country’s most dynamic and entertaining musicians.

Floating Me has a rich bloodline born from ‘90s grunge innovators Scary Mother and prog-rock favourites Cog and Karnivool. Driving the band’s formidable sound with fluid and artfully-crafted percussion is Lucius Borich. The former Cog and Juice drummer and son of guitarist-song-writer Kevin Borich told FasterLouder that touring with his father as a child had inspired him to be the musician that he is.

“I hit the road pretty early with him actually,” Borich said of his guitar-maestro father. “I used to carry gear and set up drums and sound check and play with lights and that sort of thing, so I’ve been on the road probably since I was about nine.”

Growing up on tour with his father and his musician friends – who included Richard Clapton, Skyhooks vocalist, Shirley Strachan and Rose Tattoo guitarist Robin Riley to mention a few – did Borich ever consider life as anything other than a musician?
“Not really,” he says, “You grow into the environment and that’s where it is and it’s fun and exciting and there’s a complete integration with your own emotion and expressing yourself and creating. It’s really exciting and, I guess, as a young kid I could really see that. I gravitated towards drums because the power that it had when I heard it sitting behind the fold-back . . . it was just incredible – the wattage – vibrationally it was just really attractive.”

First came the pedigree, then the prodigy, then the music. Borich was in bands before Cog but it was that band’s soaring pro-rock that he is known for. Now with hype building around Floating Me, Borich explained how the band – vocalist Andrew Gillespie, guitarist Antony Brown, keys player Tobias Messiter, and John Stockman from Karnivool on bass – was seeded before Cog to grow out of the ashes of two great bands.

“I’ve known Tobi, Andrew and Antony, who played in a band called Scary Mother back in the ‘90s when I was in a band called Juice and we toured around together,” Borich said. “I was really in to Scary Mother; I thought those guys were really progressive for the time. It was back in the time when grunge was around and they had a spin on that but with more of a progressive, kind of, orchestral edge to it.”

Fatefully, both those bands broke up in the late-90s and Borich and others, perhaps suffering a little post-break-up blues, went looking for new and exciting musical relationships. Despite some initial commitment phobia from a particular vocalist, the creative link between the musicians eventually drew them back together.

“I was looking to just go somewhere different and really see what the rest of the world had to offer so I thought I’d go to LA, and Andrew was there and I hooked up with him and that was probably ’97, ’98, and we were talking about putting a band together,” Borich reflected. “I guess you could say that was the initial spark of Cog. I had the name Cog and we started figuring out ideas and talking about music and whatever but Andrew just wasn’t ready to go into a full-fledged band or unit just yet, so I progressed on and obviously kept the Cog thing going on and that became what that was.”