Tangled Magazine

In Ghost Colours: An Interview with Cut Copy

By Jamie Evangelista and Laura Hartley

Indie electro-dance trio Cut Copy are quickly establishing themselves as one of Australia’s promising talents. They have spent the last few years touring with Daft Punk, Bloc Party, Junior Senior and Mylo since the release of their first album, Bright Like Neon Love in 2004. Now they’re back in town just in time for the release of their new album, In Ghost Colours, which made its debut at No.1 in the ARIA album charts. We chat to the band’s lead vocalist, keyboardist and guitarist, Dan Whitford about the new album, touring, and why they decided to stream their entire album available on MySpace.

Is it good to be back in Australia?

Definitely. We’ve spent a month pretty much playing shows every night in Europe and the United States so it’s a nice contrast coming home and taking a couple of days off.  Although we’re pretty much straight into touring for the V Festival as well, so it hasn’t really stopped

Where did you all meet and why did you decide to start the band?

We were all friends and we just started hanging out. We were going out to the same gigs together, and that sort of thing.  I’ve been DJing and getting interested in writing and production for a little while, and Tim and Mitchell are into complementary types of music. We have common tastes as well. It felt like a logical step from doing stuff in the bedroom to trying to create some sort of live thing.  We were inspired by 90s guitar bands, Sonic Youth, that kind of thing. I guess the idea of forming a band out of people who didn’t really know how to play their instruments and just seeing how it would work was an appropriate way of doing things. We just tried.  The band evolved from that.

What made you decide to call the band Cut Copy?

What’s in a name really? I suppose we had ideas though now I don’t remember what exactly the reason was. Like with any name you kind of guess the actual words themselves or whatever, [and then] they sort of lose their original meaning and turn into whatever the band, or the music, is about in the end. It’s not something we really think about.

How does this album compare to Bright Like Neon Love?

We spent a lot more time in the studio working on this one, and it’s a lot closer to what we were aiming to do with music. The first [album] was far more just doing it, as far as deciding to put the band together, recording everything at home… I guess it was much more of a studio experiment in a lot of ways and an experiment in what we could do. Whereas with this one, having chilled for a few years, we sort of had a much better idea of who we’re capable of being.  We were able to push ourselves further. It was creating a whole record that was unique and we’re writing better songs. The production has also taken a step up as well.

What made you decide to stream the entire album for free on your MySpace?

[The most important thing] for us, as in the band, as opposed to a label, is [for] people to be able to hear our record and hear what we’re doing, It’s more important than anything, far beyond selling records or making money out of it. So for us, just people being able to hear our music and engage with it, it’s something we’d take up.  It’s a different marketplace to perhaps what it was 10 years ago, just the way the internet works with downloading, blogs and MySpace, people encounter music differently. The main thing for us is that the people are into what we’re doing and aware of our record whether they’ve heard it on MySpace, or downloaded it from our blog. I guess the decision to do that was an easy one.

Musically how do you think you’ve changed between your first album and this?

[When] doing this record I went back to a lot of things I’d been listening to before we even wrote the first record, when I started getting into production… more ambient, psychedelic, electronic stuff. That electronic stuff became more of an influence on this record. Also texture guitar sounds is something that we worked on quite a lot, particularly in the studio with Tim Goldsworthy, with Peter Fay, it was a sound that we really liked…kind of like British guitar music, which we all share a fondness for.  We spent a lot of time working on some of the tracks with the guitar techs and Tim Goldsworthy really helped us with that.

The hit TV show Queer As Folk used your song “Going Nowhere” in one of their episodes. How was it hearing the song on the show?

It was pretty crazy, actually. You have moments where you sort of realise that your music has crossed over or that it reaches into a more of a mainstream consciousness. When you get stuff on TV, that’s sort of one time when it really hits home.  It was a cool experience.

Did that bring you more exposure?

I hope so! You never know, really. It’s hard to quantify.  I think anytime you sort of get on TV, whether it is an [advertisement] or on a show, you hope, it would bring you some more fans, or [take you] to an audience who don’t already know your music

You’re performing at the V Festival, which is going across the country, are you excited?

Definitely. It’s just been a whirlwind of shows for the last month overseas.  We’re all focusing on the fact that we’re getting home just in time for the record to come out and have a few days off. I guess that’s now, oh shit [laughs].   We’ve got the V Festival this weekend so we’re definitely excited about it. We’re looking forward to catching some of the other bands and hopefully playing to some big crowds.

You’re about to embark on a massive US tour, can you tell us about that?

We’re actually playing a couple of shows in the UK and Europe, and then [we’re going to] the States. It was only a couple of years ago we supported Franz Ferdinand and went all the way across the States.  This is a headline tour for us, with a band called The Black Kids. We’re excited, not just to play LA and New York, but actually to go through the middle of America as well.   We haven’t done it for a while so it’s going to be pretty exciting.

In Ghost Colours is now in store in Australia, with an April 8 release date for the US.