Music

Cut Copy: "There'll be a strong focus on our label this year"

by Anne T. Donahue

Tapped to graduate from their role as underground dance darlings to mainstream pop paramours, Cut Copy are set to spend the next year promoting the critically heralded Zonoscope, gearing up to bask in their newfound and “immediate connection with the audience” while also focusing on the future of Cutters; the band-founded label dedicated to signing and exposing artists they deem worthy of a listen.

“We’d been devoting a lot of time to [Cutters] when we were making our record—kind of rebranding it and signing more artists,” explains band member Tim Hoey. “We released a bunch of 12 inches for Knight Life and Nile Delta and Dasmoth, and we have a whole bunch [more] coming out this year. We like the idea of exposing new artists to the world, and I think we really take inspiration from bands like Sonic Youth who were very much about pushing all this other kind of music as well as their own. We’re always on the hunt for new bands and new producers that we like to put out, so they’ll be a strong focus on that this year.”

Their zest for new talent comes as no surprise, considering the band’s remained cavalier regarding critical reception and the corresponding hype, vowing instead to “focus on records [they] love and approach making [them] in the same sort of way”, and citing their collective journey as just that: an opportunity to grow musically while throwing industry expectations out the window.

“The inspiring thing [when you’re recording] is that you don’t know where it’s going to go,” guitarist Ben Browning maintains. “You have some idea, but you don’t know what it’s going to be until it’s finished. And I think that’s exciting while doing it. We were confidant that we were going to do something we really liked, but you kind of live on the edge a little bit, and when it was all finished in the end, it was kind of inspiring: we’d found this empty room to make a bunch of sounds in, and at the end of it, you’ve got this finished journey.”

“We’ve tried to approach it in a really sort of classic sense of constructing the record an experience . . . rather than picking out tracks,” adds frontman Dan Whitford. “Which is linked by interludes and atmospheric sounds. And there’s a sense of place through this record where the songs sort of sit together; they’re at home together perhaps more than our other records have been.”

The classic approach to recording and making music is one valued by Cut Copy, especially since they remain adamant not to deign to the industry’s disposable model or to abolish albums in favour of singles. As far as they’re concerned, the “album is an art form”, and while they admit that “some of the most amazing records are ones that are made really quickly,” they seem to know what works for them.

“I remember hearing just recently about a band that’s no longer going to be putting out albums because of the way the music industry’s going – [they’re] just going to be releasing singles immediately,” Hoey shares. “And that’s kind of the opposite of what we want to do. With the music industry and technology at the moment, that may be something that makes sense, but we favour the album as an art form.”

Drummer Mitchell Scott agrees: “I kind of hope that whatever it is – a legacy or body of work – it might be something that is constantly changing rather than staying still,” he adds. “Whenever we get a chance to make a record, we make it something that we find inspiring, so maybe this could sort of define or just say where we’re going. Or maybe it’s a weird blip and the next one will be different. [But] I think we always want to devout a lot of time to what we do in the studio, and I don’t think that would change.”