Cut Copy
interview conducted by Adam Gildar and Kimberly Robertson
introduction by Adam Gildar
Photographs by Matthew Novak
introduction by Adam Gildar
Photographs by Matthew Novak
According to the Association for Religion Data Archives, white people in America don't attend religious services like their ethnic counterparts, but looking at the throngs of the nearly all Caucasion audience flocking to see Cut Copy lead a secular spiritual, you'll quickly see what they lack in dogma they make up for in dedication to the almighty dance floor.
45 minutes before a sold out show on a tour of sold out shows, illiterate crammed into the tiny backstage of Denver's Bluebird theater with Dan Whitford, Mitchell Scott and Tim Hoey, the three Australians apostles of this growing, glowing church of lights and music.
On the final stretch of a two year international tour supporting 2007's "In Ghost Colours", Cut Copy continue to ride the new New Wave as synthpop missionaries. With an expanding congregation of anglo accolytes clad in day glow and ready to move and maybe even be moved, whether anyone (including the musical ministers) is aware of the sermon's message remains irrelevant.
When asked what attracted him to dance music Dan Whiford the band's founder, lead singer, synth pusher and main songwriter flatly noted that it was, "a bit easier to make than other kinds of music."
Though reticent to deem themselves another "80's band", Cut Copy certainly echo the dramatic presentation of Regan era blah pop with just as little to say, albiet in potentially even more grandiose ways.
With little previous experience playing instruments prior to transforming Dan's solo project in 2003 into "a really dodgy garage band to do covers of the songs he was writing", as drummer Mitchell Scott put it, it only makes sense that Cut Copy's music embraces limitation.
Instead of attempting to break out from a box of genre constraints and technical ineptitude, the trio's live performance delivers a tightly wrapped package of electronic and rock influenced anthems. With four to the floor rhythms, hook heavy climaxes,club friendly riffs and repetitive lyrics of cloying love, apparent in songs such as "Hearts on Fire", and "Feel the Love", Cut Copy creates an evangelical atmosphere where it's difficult to do anything but throw your hands up and dance.
Much like influences Jean Michel Jarre , ELO , and Daft Punk , Cut Copy's music carefully coincides with the flash of visual spectacle, in this case a fulgent wall of tubular LED lights carefully timed to appear under the control of Dan's oustretched preacher's hand.
As the finale to a night of giddy sweating it out, Cut Copy saved their hit,"Lights and Music", the most self reflexive song title since original New Waver's Uncle Bungle's "Video Killed the Radio Star", for last. As the aptly titled Prophet syntheisizer pulsed and Dan reminded the crowd of their "last chance to dance", the audience rose and gave praise with abandon. To what? God only knows.
I'm looking at a bunch of your tour dates and it looks like your selling out almost every show. I was also noticing that you're playing smaller venues. I'm curious if this was a conscious choice. Why not go for something larger?
Dan Whitford: Well some of them are larger. We just played in LA at some larger ones, like 1200 capacity and then a 2200 capacity. But I guess our general philosophy is if we're going to do shows this time- it's probably the last show we're going to be doing for this album-- so we feel like most of the hardcore, dedicated fans have seen us already, and we don't want to play shows that are half full at this point in the record. So we figured it's kind of nice to leave things with full houses rather than empty ones or half full ones. We obviously don't want people missing out either, but they already had their chance (laughs).
Why Cut Copy, not Copy and Paste?
Dan: Copy and Paste?
We're assuming it was from the computer commands: Cut and Copy, Copy and Paste.
Dan: Umm.. I don't know, that's a little bit obvious. Copy and Paste, I don't know. Yeah I don't know, Cut Copy. Cut Copy's got a few different meanings to it. So sort of leave it open to people to interpret. If you call something Cut and Paste, or Copy and Paste you're not leaving much to the imagination
For you guys what do you feel is more important when your making music and when you're performing for people; make people move, or make music that moves people?
Mitchell Scott: I think it's gotta be the latter. But when we're playing a show, there's always a reciprocal relationship. You try to get a vibe going, and it's hard to say where it starts-- does it start with yourself, or does it start with the crowd-- but once it gets going, it feeds on itself. If a show's not going well, it's hard to find the energy to sort of lift it, but when a show is going well, you sort of feed off the crowd and the crowd sort of feeds off of the energy you've got going, and you know, it can really become something special.
Dan: Of course they're not mutually exclusive either; you can still be moved by music that makes you want to move.
I think that in a lot of people's views of your music that's where you guys are able to maintain a balance; it's both music that makes people want to dance, but also there's something empathetic about it as well.
Mitchell: Yeah, it's not just music for the dance floor either. For people who often times don't feel like dancing at a concert, it's not the sort of music where they're going to be left out and have nothing to enjoy. Like if you go to see some hardcore techno music, I think if your not dancing, you're probably missing the point. I think we're pretty conscious of making music that isn't just for a dance floor.
How do you feel you're successfully doing that, or places where you find that to be challenging. With dance music you have certain constraints that keep things moving forward, but how are you able to keep those two elements together?
Dan: It's a challenge if you're going after someone, like an act, that's purely, like sonically big and trying to blow people's heads off with big kick drums and you know that sort of thing. I think dance acts are focused on just making people dance. So if you go on after someone like that, often people might not have the same attention span to listen to songs that have that dance element but also a songwriting element to them as well. I don't know, I think that we've gotten to a point that we've got people that are interested enough in our own music, that people are there to see us most times we play. I think when we first started it was a lot more difficult because you're sort of always up against whoever the main act is, or whoever is on after you. These days you know there's usually a crowd that knows our songs, so it doesn't really matter so much, people are really there to see you anyways, so it's fine.
On that note, you've stated that when you first started playing, as I'm sure it is for many bands, it was a struggle for people to even come to your shows or get booked. How do you see a difference in American vs European or Australian crowds-- the response you got initially coming here, and then you guys coming back through? How have people responded to electronic influenced music? I remember reading on one of your blogs that Jean Michel Jarre is a big influence, but out here he might not be quite the big name, even though he's played some of the biggest concerts in the world. Do you guys feel that people are cognisant of some of your influences, or do they go "hey this is Cut Copy and they're the first to do this?"
Dan: They might not necessarily know our influences. But they seem to know electronic music in the states as much as they do back home or in Europe. We've actually had a quite positive experience touring here. Some people tell us these horror stories of driving in a van endlessly across the States, and they've done it for years without much luck. But we've always seemed to have a pretty good response, even when we first toured here. So we've never noticed-- it's never felt like people don't get dance music here, in fact if anything it's probably the opposite.
Mitchell: Yeah, I mean you do find that people are not always going to get exactly where you're coming from. There's always going to be people who are able to pick out more obscure references than the majority. But we usually find, people, when they get it wrong, they're like, "you're an 80's band," which you know, it's not 100% false. There are some influences of ours from the 80's, but there's so much more going on than that. When people get it wrong, they usually say we just have a really 80's sound, but I think they're still enjoying our music and getting something out of it, so it's hard to be displeased by it or anything. But yeah, not everybody can nail 100% of your influences.
What attracted you originally to music that makes you move? What was your first initiation to dance music, and what did it do to you that made you want to incorporate that into what you were creating?
Dan: I don't know, I always thought it seemed a bit easier to make than other kinds of music. Which is probably, you know, when dance music started--maybe not when it started, but maybe say like House music, like Chicago House, it was basically music made by people that didn't know how to make music. They end up listening to Disco, and making their own version of it that's perhaps not technically as well conceived, but, at the same time, it tends to do something that's cool. I always felt like dance music was something that anyone could really try and do. And certainly now you see that so many people with the internet, are able to make their own remixes and edits of stuff. Some of it sucks, but a lot of it's really cool. I don't know if that answers your question, but it just seemed like a way to make music. I never learned an instrument properly, and we're all relatively new to the instruments we play on stage, so if it wasn't dance music, then we might not have started a band.
How did you guys get together?
Mitchell: Well Tim and I grew up nearby each other in a smaller area of Australia, and then both moved to Melbourne. Dan used to visit with friends in the summer where we grew up. I think Dan met Tim a couple of times then, and we all ended up separtely moving to Melbourne and ended up in the same group of friends. So before we started the band we were just a part of a group of friends who would hang out a lot. So you know it started out as just friends. Dan had been working on music as Cut Copy, which was then a solo project, then he first got Tim around to record some guitar, and then me to play some drums. It was firstly conceived as an idea as a really dodgy garage band to do covers of the songs he was writing. There were no real plans for it to really last or anything. It was just a bit of a laugh, which was probably good in a way, no one had any real expectations going into it. And then we started thinking about playing shows, playing live, and it sort of grew some legs and yeah, it's sort of continued.
Do you guys play your video game?
Dan: Video game?
Your song is in Fifa 2009.
Dan: I don't have a game console, but if I did, I probably would. This guys (points to Tim) does.
Are you guys big soccer fans?
Tim Hoey: Oh yeah.
Dan: Yeah I like the World Cup when it comes around.
Dan: Yeah I like the World Cup when it comes around.
Mitchell: I played growing up, but yeah, not so much, only when there's a big world cup going on.
How do you feel about having your music--music that's very much participatory, at least that's how I think about it, you want to move to it, and you feel very drawn to action yourself-- in a game that is actually about sports and movement, but the person playing the game isn't moving at all?
(everyone laughs)
Mitchell: Well a lot of people have said they really dig it. But it's hard to say not having played the game.
Dan: I actually never thought about that. It is weird. I don't know, it's kind of cool, it's one of the things about being in a band and having your music getting out there; you'll hear it some times in just the most strange places. I remember hearing "Saturdays", a song from our first record, once when I was on the phone to like a gas company back home, and the hold music was "Saturdays".
Did they give you a discount when you told them?
(everyone laughs)
So what is next for Cut Copy? You said this was the last tour to support "In Ghost Colours", and then after this will you be taking a break or is it right into the studio?
Mitchell: We're spending about three days in New York, and then we go home and we're going to start writing songs.
Dan: We're probably not going to jump straight into the studio or anything, so hopefully it will be a bit of a holiday, or relaxation time, and also just thinking about our new record. But that's the plan for this year, to just hopefully get a new record written, or get a majority of it done.
This is a question specifically for you Dan; you were a graphic designer before you were into music and you were DJing, but I'm curious how important the visual element is. Obviously lights are a big part of your show, but also design with your album covers, videos, how important is it for you to be involved in that, and even aside from that, how do you feel visual mediums have influenced something that is sonic?
Dan: It's hugely important. That's why people make music videos. That's why there are album covers and things like that, because that visual side is just inextricably tied to music. I kind of worked on the visual side of it for a long time, and will continue to do that. I mean we have people that sometimes do designs for our T-shirts and stuff as well, like other outside people, but we always have control over that, so we make sure we have good quality. Anything that's associated with the band will come through us. I think we're all interested in other artists that do the same thing, that have their own artwork for CD's and things like that, it just creates a historian. I always used to love looking through booklets, like say Beck's album booklets. You get an insight into how the mind of the band or the artist works, and hopefully that's what people get out of our work.
I've worked on all of the album artwork with my design company. We've done all of Cut Copy artwork from day one. As much as possible I'd like to work on that. But it's been hard this year, the last 12 months, probably because we've been touring so much. It starts to get to a point where it starts to become a bit of a job, being on the road, touring as a band.
As I told you guys, illiterate explores themes. Our next theme is Trash and Treasure. I'm curious if each of you could briefly speak on an experience on the road on this tour, where you wish you could trash it and one you'd like to treasure.
Mitchell: It would be nice if we could trash in LA where our show was shut down. We played at the Henry Fonda Theater, and they had oversold it for some reason, which was nothing to do with us. But on the night it turned out they sold too many tickets and the Fire Marshall came and shut down the show, and it was the first time it had happened to that venue in 20 years apparently. So I wish we could trash that, but it was also pretty crazy in the end. It was a memorable experience, but yeah I wish we could have really done things differently.
Dan: Ummmmm... I hate these kinds of questions, I can never think of an answer off the top of my head...
You can go on to Treasure, something that you'd like to bring with you.
Dan:...
Tim:...
Mitchell: Well we ate at Watercourse last night, which I'd like to treasure, being a vegetarian and all, it's hard to find good restaurants like that.That was a bit of a win.
.jpg "Ryan Riss | November 4 - October 28, 2011")
