On the tragic 2 year anniversary of September 11, ITM’s Vocal Assault chatted down the line to Dan Whittford, the mastermind behind Cut Copy, to get the goss on working on the new record in Paris, Cut Copy’s new live line-up and their long awaited return to the stage for this year’s Livid as you’ve never seen them before.
Starting off only a few years ago after discovering the magic of making electronic music whilst completing an art and design degree at uni. Dan soon became consumed, suddenly it started taking up more and more of his time, so he got together with a friend and together they made a demo, sent it out to a few labels and faster than you could say 1981 they were signed to Modular (home of The Avalanches, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Rocket Science etc) and have been getting a decent amount of interest and building a solid fan base ever since.
The outside world’s first taste of Cut Copy came with the track ‘Hundertwasser’ which was released on the ‘More Fish Out of Water’ compilation, put out in the UK by XL’s offshoot Rex Recordings, Australia’s first taste came in the form of ‘1981’ receiving some well earned airplay and quickly followed up with the release of the ‘I Thought of Numbers’ EP.
Soon came a flood of shows and supports, which saw Cut Copy sweep crowds off their feet across the country in a bunch of sweaty, danceanthemic DJ type live sets. Then as the hype begun, things went a little quiet in the Cut Copy camp as they went into hibernation to work on their debut record.
³I started writing for the new record after the EP was released, so it’s been a couple of years now. It’s changed a bit, I probably wrote a lot more stuff than what actually made it on to the record, I wrote at least twice as many tracks. Most of the recording was done over here, just in a little studio here in Melbourne with a sound engineer that we knew, we didn’t really want to do anything too fancy with the recording, so we just got down the basic elements and also a lot of the stuff that I’d done on the synthesiser and put a lot of it together, then we took a bunch of the stuff that we’d recorded and fleshed it all out and mixed it with one of the guys from Cassius. I chose him because I liked the Cassius stuff he’d mixed and a record that he’d mixed for a band called ‘Phoenix’ even more so. So I wanted to work with him on the new Cut Copy record, in the end we probably mixed about 17 tracks or something, so there’s a bunch of tunes that I reckon were quite good but just didn’t fit in with the rest of the album.’
While being based over in Paris for a few months and learning from the scene and how it all works over there, served a little bit of an eye opener and an inspiration.
³It was definitely different over there, I mean I expected that, just because of the music that has come from France was always a lot different to what comes out of Australia. Australia’s got a real rock/band focus where as French music is a lot more dance/house oriented. It was a huge surprise though, there’s a big black population over there with a huge hip hop scene, that was the bit that blew me away I guess, it was so unexpected. It was all so cool, it was so different to being in Australia, which is a great environment to do the record in.’
The new album has a very 80s feel, so Dan was keen to collaborate with one of the shining lights of that decade on a track or two, but that proved a pretty impossible task in the end, with the names on the list being scratched out almost as soon as they were put down.
³We approached a few producers and people that were involved, to try and get them on the record, but we found out that about 90% of the people were either in rehab or they’ve died, it was seriously crazy’ laughs Dan.
Before adding ³There was probably only one or two out of the whole list that were still doing stuff. I guess in the end it was better that way anyway, I’m glad that we did everything on the record and I guess the style of the record probably wouldn’t have suited getting guests anyway, I mean there’s a lot of love songs and stuff from the heart, so it wouldn’t have made sense if I distanced myself by getting lots of different people to work on it.’
Since completing their debut and returning home, there have been a few additions to the live line-up of Cut Copy, adding bass, guitar and drums to the fusion will prove an interesting task for the band as they make their stage debut at this year’s Livid festival.
³Up until now we’ve done most of our shows sort of more like DJ shows, where we’ve used equipment and stuff but it’s mainly been me and one other guy, using a lot of samples. But since putting together the new record, I’ve been playing with some friends and bringing a few more instruments on board to write and perform with.
So there’s just the classic rock things, like guitar, bass and drums with the synthesisers. Our sampler blew up, so I guess that’s stopped us doing anything too serious with samples. Which was good in a way I think, cause it sort of narrowed our options a little and given us something different to try. Recently we’ve just been working on the band stuff more seriously as a live show and getting it ready for when we tour this time.’
With the new album seeing a lot more vocals throughout the tracks, the new material you can expect to see live at these shows will reflect on that as Dan picks up the mic for the first time.
³When I did the vocals on one of the tracks from my last EP, that was the track that got the most feedback and good response overseas etc. So we’re keen to follow that and see where I can go with it, it just felt pretty natural actually. When I was writing stuff I felt like the tracks weren’t complete unless I added some sort of vocal to them, so I don’t know why things have gone that way but they have and I’ll ride it I guess and see where it takes me. It’ll be fun to do live for the first time at these shows I think.’
³We have had a bit of a trial run though, we’ve all been playing together for about six months. During that time we’ve made up all of these different band names and played shows with friend’s bands just in and around Melbourne, just to road test the material, but Livid will be our debut as the band under our real name, so it’s exciting for us. It’s funny actually, cause we were looking at the bill and going ‘we’ve gotta go along and check all of these bands out’ and then we got the announcement that we were going to play it, that was exciting.’
Don’t miss your chance to catch Cut Copy as never seen before in full band mode at this year’s Livid. Look out for their new single ‘Future’ out on Modular, which should be stocking the shelves of your local record store at around the same time.
Cut Copy tour as part of Livid 2003:
Sat 11 October – Moore Park, Sydney
Sun 12 October – Melbourne Park, Melbourne
Sat 18 October – RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
