sound of success
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Cut Copy
Source: Supplied
WHEN actor Alexander Skarsgard was filming Iraq war miniseries Generation Kill in the Kalahari Desert five years ago he had one album to remind him of his nocturnal life back in Stockholm. It was Melbourne band Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours, which had just been released.
Two years ago, Skarsgard saw Cut Copy live when he was in Rio while they were touring their Zonoscope album.
“The promoter came in and said, ‘There’s a guy who wants to meet you, he’s a big actor in Hollywood,’ ” Cut Copy’s frontman Dan Whitford says.
“Then this seven-foot tall ripped Swedish dude comes through the door and tells us how much he loved us and how he listened to In Ghost Colours every night in the desert, and how he had a huge attachment to it. So we hung out after the show.”
As well as Skarsgard apologising to Whitford (“I told him how obsessed my girlfriend is with him,” the singer admits), it became a mutual lovefest.
“We became best friends for life, just from one night of hanging out,” Whitford says.
When they were looking for someone to star in a six-minute, twisted video for the title track of their new album Free Your Mind they called their favourite shirt-dodging Swede.
“He got right into it, he picked out his wardrobe, he kept asking what his motivation was,” Whitford says of the “crazy” clip, shot in LA.
Free Your Mind passed the Skarsgard test; Whitford admits much about the album harks back to In Ghost Colours, which reached No. 1 in Australia.
2011′s Zonoscope was the most insular Cut Copy record, although it earned the band their first ARIA Award.
“Zonoscope was a conscious effort to go to a different place we hadn’t been to before, maybe throw people off,” Whitford admits. “We did to some degree, more so in this country than other places. But it’s a lot of people’s favourite Cut Copy record. But some people who were just wondering, OK where’s Hearts On Fire or Lights and Music? We didn’t want to be an act who just churns out the same material and rehash the hits we had a few years ago. We went somewhere else. The common thing between In Ghost Colours and this record is a sense of wanting to connect with people a bit more, Zonoscope was more about going into our own world and inviting people in if they were up for it. This album is a little more direct than Zonoscope..”
After touring Zonoscope for 18 months Whitford returned to Melbourne and was re-energised by an underground dance music scene.
“Little pockets of crazy parties would go all night and only the people in that scene knew about it,” Whitford says. “It reminded me of that early acid house scene in the UK where the people had this sense of unity.”
Whitford started watching documentaries about the UK’s summer of love in the late `80s and rediscovered classic albums of the era like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica.
The uplifting feel soon infiltrated the writing and recording of Free Your Mind.
“This record has a sense of celebrating that back to basics feel of what dance music is about, bringing people together and creating this sense of uplifting togetherness,” he says.
Let Me Show You borrows from the K Klass UK house hit of the same name from 1993 (“In the spirit of acid house I just made it weird sounding and put it in the chorus”) while the album has vocal samples and ambient interludes throughout.
“There was a theme of mind expansion, some psychic connection between people whether it’s on the dancefloor or in life in general,” Whitford says. “If you look at stuff like the KLF or DJ Shadow, they’re record nerds like myself, and the way they put albums together wasn’t just song after song, it was more a 3D record than a 2D record. But that uplifting, embracing coming-together-for-dance was a thread across the whole album.”
A keen student of the history of dance music, Whitford remembers playing acid house as a teenager working in community radio. He thinks the new underground scene is a reaction to the generic version of dance music that has overtaken the mainstream.
“Dance music has gone off track a bit,” Whitford says. “Old school house music doesn’t come from Van Halen being played on a synthesiser. It was originally a real subculture – gay people, black people – minorities who embraced dance music and over time it became mainstream. To me that’s what it’s about, not about throwing beer bottles at the stage and musclebound dudes high firing and fist pumping. Although if they want to come to our shows I won’t turn them away!”
Many Australians don’t realise the scope of Cut Copy’s popularity overseas, which stretches beyond the usual markets of the US, UK and Europe, where they regularly sell out headline shows.
“We played to 1000 people on a Monday night in Estonia,” Whitford says. “You wonder how they even know our music, but the internet is such a powerful force of getting music to people all around the world. People who are fans of the kind of music we make are going to be able to hear us no matter where we are.
“It’s changed everything, you don’t necessarily need to have a song on radio or have a poster up, people find you on the internet. It gets your music to other countries. Our success has built and built, our fans are there because they like our music, not because they’ve heard one song on commercial radio. They’re invested.”
HEAR
Free Your Mind (Modular) out tomorrow
SEE
Cut Copy, Future Music Festival, Flemington Racecourse, March 9. Moshtix
