For drummer James Hoey, guitarist Andrew McDonald and bassist Luke Pollard (Aaron's older brother), the game is continually keeping up with the increasingly strange requests coming from their band leader.

One of the band's songs, the three-minute post-metal bottle rocket "A Vexing Predicament", was pieced together from disparate ideas and improvisations collected from jam sessions and demoes. When it came time to lay down the track in the studio, they were essentially making things up as they went along.

"[Hoey] never had any real idea of where the song was even going," Pollard admits. "We'd tell him things like, 'you have five seconds to play something eclectic and heavy', and then all of those mini-sections were then combined [to form the complete drum track], much to Luke's dismay! Watching him make the bass for that was a laugh."

Luke agrees that this technique made recording bass parts an interesting if trying experience.

"Because so much of the drums are improvised," he explains, "recording bass can be like playing Guitar Hero – watching the screen for changes in the beat. Things are recorded in little chunks, and you have literally no idea how the finished product will sound. It sounds crazy really, but we have such a good understanding between us that we are confident it will work out fine as each person adds their part."

Occasionally, though, someone manages to exact some revenge and Aaron will find himself on the receiving end of a vague piece of direction himself, such as when Luke was trialling ideas for the first half of "The World is a Deaf Machine" and asked his younger sibling to record some piano to sit above the drums and bass in a demo he hadn't yet heard.

"He was totally freaking out because I wouldn't let him hear what he was playing over, I just told him the feel and what I was aiming for. I layered that over the top and it sounded great so I sent it straight back to him. He immediately loved it and so did Andy and James."

That improvised piano line was cleaned up, polished and recorded properly, and now forms the melodic theme for the first half of "The World is a Deaf Machine", which along with "A Vexing Predicament" make up Tangled Thoughts of Leaving's contribution to their recently-released split CD with sleepmakeswaves. The result is an unpredictable, completely immersive 18-minute journey the continues to be reveal more of itself on multiple listens.

To record and release a split CD with a band you have never actually met in person may seem, at first, a challenge. But in the new musical paradigm musicians are able to find like-minded potential collaborators from anywhere in the world with the help of the internet, and the brothers Pollard would not let a pesky 3,000km get in the way of releasing a split CD with sleepmakeswaves.

"[The split CD] stemmed from a mutual interest in each other's music," Aaron says. "From our stand point, we feel very privledged to share an album with a band that is so deservedly aquiring praise globally. We simply couldn't think of any reasons not to do it."

Luke continues: "We were aware of sleepmakeswaves after we heard their first demo online and really enjoyed it. We exchanged a few friendly messages on MySpace and then raised the idea of a split, which was really pie in the sky stuff at the time. But then we realised it wasn't so crazy after all, and would be really beneficial for both bands."

But Tangled Thoughts of Leaving had, to that point, been building their reputation as an avant-garde, jazzy metal band with occasional dalliances into post-metal (mostly thanks to their debut EP Tiny Fragments), and had not really explored the territory of straight up post-rock. The partnership with sleepmakeswaves allowed them to move out of that comfort zone and try something a little different.

"We thought it would be a neat idea to do something that would both counter and compliment what they do," Luke says. "Their music is so positive and uplifting, so we really aimed for "Deaf Machine" to be as bleak as possible. Just to make the split a really interesting listening experience, like two sides of the same coin.

"We wanted to keep it slow and droney and really opressive and desperate sounding. We had been listening to a lot of country-tinged stuff and I had been reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian – very dark things. It was afterwards that we added the big heavy climax, although it took us a while to find a way to make it fit. The other guys came up with that while I was away on tour with Eleventh He Reaches London and it took me a few days to accept it," he laughs.

As it happened, sleepmakeswaves opened the Sydney leg of Eleventh He Reaches London's national tour, and Luke (who plays bass in EHRL) would get to meet his Sydney brethren in person after all.

"I met the dudes on tour with EHRL last year. We played with them in Sydney and had a great time. At that stage we had just decided to go ahead with the split, so it was great to meet them and talk about it all – as ambitious as it all seemed then!"

But ambition is in plentiful supply in Perth, and is almost a prerequisite of forming a band there. As the world's most isolated capital city, if you don't commit fully to what you are doing in Perth, you will toil in a level of obscurity not possible in other states. It's fair to say that ambition, and possibly optimism, played a significant role when Aaron Pollard started Tangled Thoughts of Leaving in Perth as a 14-year-old.

"It was something I started when I was quite young, probably 14," he recalls. "Andy was a guitarist friend of mine and I attended school with James. We started jamming before I forced us to get started by booking a gig before we even had a real setlist. Funnily enough, that gig was at the Rosemount Hotel, and James sadly plays his last show with us on May 2nd at the same venue.

"There's no doubting we were a pretty craptacular band for the majority of that time. [We had] big ideas without the proficiency to pull it off. That said, there's only one real way of knowing the right direction, and that's to well and truly know the wrong way. The term 'earn your stripes' is an understatement for us!"

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving join Eleventh He Reaches London, HEIRS and Mystic Eyes for drummer James Hoey's final gig with the band at the Rosemount Hotel on May 2nd, presented by Bombshellzine. You can purchase their split CD with sleepmakeswaves on their MySpace profile at www.myspace.com/ttol.

(Photos courtesy of Cameron Obscura at cameronobscura.blogspot.com and Laurence Davis at shapeshiftcreative.com.)