Tomorrow marks the official physical release of Cut Copy‘s electro-charged In Ghost Colours, their second LP. Check back here to my original review to read more about the album, which includes one of my top ten songs of the moment–the New Wave delight, “Hearts On Fire”! In Ghost Colours is truly a wonderful, and dare I say–superior album. To celebrate its release, I’ve conducted an e-mail interview with Tim Hoey of Cut Copy. It’s short and sweet, and lends some real insight into the band’s whereabouts, including touring with Daft Punk and making coffee! Check it out below!
3 years of touring the first record world wide (This was due to a staggered release), Setting up our record label ‘Cutters Records,’ Contributing to the fabric live series, writing in ghost colours, walks in the park, recording in ghost colours in NY with all around nice guy and chess champion (95-98) Timothy Goldsworthy, Making the so cosmic mixtape, some graphic design and art, a holiday, fir
st OS tour in year and a half, touring with daft punk,making coffee, some remixing. Good times basically.
Now your brand new album, In Ghost Colours, will be out shortly–April for the U.K. and the U.S., and already out in Australia! Feel accomplished?
For sure! It felt like it took forever to get this out. We finished it quite a while ago and it’s great that public is now starting to hear it. Everybody seems to be liking it which is great!
How long did it take to construct this album?
After recording with Tim last Feb and mixing it a month later, we took all the tracks away and went about compiling the record. We really wanted an album that you can listen to from start to finish. We spent time making interludes and running songs into one another, also dropping songs so it’s consistent. It was really important for us to make an album and not a collection of singles or 12 inches slapped together on one disk.
I’ve often wondered about the writing process for a song’s creation. One of the things I enjoy most about your music is its repetitive nature, which slowly expands and layers into something much deeper. How do you go about constructing a song in general as a group?
We all have home studio set ups so we often work on ideas
separately and exchange song files and work on each others material. Then we’ll get together in a rehearsal space and play the ideas as a band and record that…Often we’ll just exchange mix tapes of music we’re listening to. Dan tends to write in loops and then we’ll go about together as a band pasting these different parts together to make a cut copy song. I think working with Tim has taught us to be less rigid with recording and to experiment with ideas more.
Was there a specific sound or theme you were attempting to encapsulate in creating this new album? I would say there’s a distinctly hollower, perhaps eerier sound this time around.
I guess first of all Tim wanted capture us as a band and maybe capture some of the energy of the live show. We also wanted to push the song writing into a more cosmic realm this time instead of the straight forward pop music of the first record. Dan has become a lot more confident with his voice so he is doing a lot more harmonies on this record (this can also be attributed to his Geoff Lynne and Californian pop obsession). There is a lot more texture on this record which maybe contributing to the eeriness you mentioned…
So we’ve covered your recordings. Now, I’m interested in your thoughts regarding live shows. Though I’ve not yet been to a live Cut Copy performance, I hear that you all put on a brilliant show. What’s the on-stage experience like for you guys?
Well i guess our live show is a lot rawer than the recordings. We kind of took guidance from early nineties indy guitar bands where musicianship wasn’t always that important to put on a memorable show (also not knowing how to play our instruments too well had a lot to do with this). Our show is a combination of a traditional twin guitar/bass/drums and then we have a sequencer playing of a lot of the samples we can’t play live (or we trigger them in real time) along with keyboards. I guess we wanted to make our show as live as we possible can because always found going to see a band play was a lot more engaging plus it’s a lot more fun for us. There has always been a lot of emphasis put on live music here in Australia so when we started out we really had to play live as a band to get shows.
Any particularly bad experiences on stage? Or perhaps, behind the scenes?
Sure…i guess everyone does at some stage. When you rely on machines for part of your sound there’s always going to be trouble. Especially after a flight…
For a period there we seemed to be injuring ourselves a lot at shows (backs,ankles, you name it) but now we have a stretching and work out routine before each set to combat this.
And now, what’s next for the band? Future projects, releases, collaborations?
A lot of touring for the next 12 months i guess. We have our US tour with the black kids which we’re really looking forward to. Also coachella and summer festivals in Europe and the UK. We’re going to make some more dj mixes and work on some more remixes. We’ve got a new ‘Knightlife’ release coming out on our label as well.
Thank you for answering a few of my questions…I wish you continued success in your future releases! Thank you for speaking to MuuMuse!
In the meantime, the album has already hit number one back at home in Australia. Congratulations to the band! To hear more from the group, check out their MySpace here and try out the new album!
Image Credits:
Interview Banner Photo by Emilie Elizabeth
Second Photo Courtesy of Modular Recordings
Third Photo by Ben Saunders
Fourth Photo by Tommy Salmon
