Interview by Katie Rolston

After the release of CUT COPY’s much anticipated and third break-through album ‘Zonoscope’, front-man Dan Whitford shares his thoughts on touring, self-production and experimentation.

Where are you calling me from? Where is Cut Copy at the moment?

We just arrived in Cologne in Germany this morning. We’ve got a show here tonight.

Very exciting. How’s the European leg of the tour been so far?

It’s been great. We’re two weeks in with two weeks to go then we go to the States for a month straight after that. But the shows so far have been awesome. We’ve sold out probably the majority of the shows on this tour and the responses to the new record, the new songs and the show in general has been amazing. It has been a really positive start to touring this record.

You self-produced this record. Was it harder to trust yourselves in getting good compilations considering you didn’t have that outside opinion?

Yeah, I think in the beginning there was an element of being confident in our decision making. It didn’t feel like a real step because on each record when I write music its often partly producing as we go so it’s almost like the production side of things is part of the way we write and is as important to some of our music as the songs themselves. It didn’t feel like an unfamiliar role and as we got started we set up our own studio in a warehouse. We just got going with it and after we’d been there a week or so it just felt completely natural.

Tell me a bit more about your warehouse set up.

We did have the idea of trying to work on this record from start to finish and do as much of it as possible as we could ourselves. So we had to find a space that would be good for recording and we talked about getting a studio but we didn’t want the time pressure and the money pressure that comes with a studio. It’s quite expensive and often you might start with two weeks booked in and you might get halfway through and you realise that you’ve got to really rush to finish the recording of songs. This is good for some people that take forever to do things but for us we like the idea that we have the opportunity to experiment and try ideas and if you’re really working against the clock you might have to compromise some of the ideas that you have for the sake of getting things finished. Thankfully this time around we were able to have weird ideas, unlikely ideas and try them out to see whether they worked and in some cases these weird ideas made it onto the record.

In a space like a warehouse you’d get plenty of reverb.

Yeah, definitely. That was sort of a conscious consideration. We actually had to make a little drum hut out of mattresses for Mitchell [Scott] to record his drums in because it was too echoey. For some stuff it’s actually kind of cool to have the natural reverb in percussion and some of the vocals so it was definitely experimental. (Laughs)

Tell me about the percussion because it seems to be quite the shine-through element on the record.

We dabbled in some percussion on the last record but the DFA [Records] studio in New York has a million different bits of percussion – that’s almost part of their signature sound. They encouraged us to try using bits of percussion on the last record when we were pretty happy with the way it sounded. So this time around with our own set up we got as much percussion as we could in there, weird instruments and any sort of bizarre things. We got in there and went to town experimenting, recording different rhythms and recording methods and really exploring it this time. I guess rather than adding it on at the end we made it more the starting point for a lot of the tracks where the percussion and the rhythm really drives it along.

Were there any records you were listening to that got you through the recording process or had any influence on the sound of Zonoscope?

Definitely. We listen to music all the time in the recording process and at home in our own worlds, there’s an excess of music and it’s always around. As far as having an influence on the record I was listening to a lot of HAPPY MONDAYS and PRIMAL SCREAM, that sort of era of British music where rock crossed over a bit more into dance and more specifically an exotic tropical sort of feel that you see in Zonoscope. Also familiar stuff, I listen to a lot of African Hollywood mix stuff and even the early 80s like TALKING HEADS and GRACE JONES stuff like that was a real influence. It’s always a combination of different things but listening to the record I think they were some key reference points.

Were there any moments in production when you thought, ‘wow, this is what the album is meant to be about’?

There were definitely some tracks that were different to others. For me the last track ‘Sun God’ definitely felt like one of those ‘wow’ moments that came more or less from being in the studio and mucking around. It started out as a four-and-a-half minute song and just sitting there with a whole bunch of parts we recorded. I just sat there playing one part over and over and thought it feels like this has somewhere to go still, even after four-and-a-half minutes. We just added more and more things on top of it and tweaking it. Then the next day we had a 15 minute track so that was kind of one of those moments.

Another one was at the end of the process we had an idea of getting a choir or some additional vocals on the record. When we went to Atlanta to do the final mixing we got a mini-vocal gospel choir to record vocals for a bunch of the tracks and that was a really special experience to get that little bit of sparkle on something we were already really happy with, just giving it a whole other dimension and it really brought a lot to some of the tracks.

Did you have any of those barricade moments on the record when things just weren’t working out?

We never seem to have any internal or personal issues (Laughs), probably one of our strengths over the years and why we’ve stuck around as a band. Certainly in the creative process you have times when you feel like you’re up against a brick wall and usually that’s because you’ve been sitting there listening to your songs too much. It’s almost like once you realise that you’re doing it, you take a week off and try to think about something else for a while and inevitably you come back and nail it straight away. I think it’s just the nature of the beast. To be successful and creative half of the challenge is dividing up these moments of frustration with things that just aren’t working out with what you’re doing then being able to come back and go, ‘yeah, I’ve got a new perspective now’, and just make it work.

Nice and refreshed.

Yeah, exactly.

How are you feeling about coming back to Australia and doing the Aussie leg of the tour?

I think we’re all pretty psyched about it. We just did Laneway Festival before we left and that coincided with the album coming out so people were very new to it. I think it will be good to come back and do a few headline shows and some festival shows having had the record out for a few months and people will be more familiar with the new material. I think for us having been away for a few months too, it’s always good to come back home – good food, good coffee and a good hang with our friends.

Cut Copy will return to Australia in early May for Groovin’ the Moo and their official national tour.

MORE INTERVIEWS >>