Junior story: Cut Copy’s ‘Zonoscope’, track-by-track, February 2011
A story for Junior. Excerpt below.
Tim Hoey – the guitarist and sampler of Melbourne-based synthpop quartet Cut Copy – walks us through Zonoscope, the band’s third album, and their first since 2008’s chart-topping In Ghost Colours.
1. ‘Need You Now’: This is the most personal song on the record, for me. We loved the idea of having this really epic song, like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘On Fire’; a stadium [sized], really emotional song, without it sounding too emo. It’s certainly my favourite, and it’s a perfect way for us to begin the record.
2. ‘Take Me Over’: This one is our straight-up AM radio pop song. It’s pop in its purest form, as far as Cut Copy knows it. There’s a heavy emphasis on percussion, and that song very much is representative of that. It’s certainly one of the more pure pop moments on the record.
3. ‘Where I’m Going’: It’s one of my favourite tracks, because it’s quite different: it’s quite ‘chanty’ and there’s no real chorus. We really like those old Beach Boys records that deal with subject matter that’s quite depressing; the songs are about heartbreak, but the music’s quite uplifting. We always found that really interesting, to see people singing along and smiling to these songs about alienation and heartbreak.
4. ‘Pharoahs + Pyramids’: This track is straight-up house music, boiled down to its simplest [form]. We were listening to a lot of Chicago house at the time; Adonis, and stuff like that. We added live percussion over the top of it, along with sequenced, synthetic percussions, so it helps tie in with the rest of the tracks on the record. It’s quite a pop song as well; it was our intention for it to exist within a club, but you can also listen to it at home.
5. ‘Blink And You’ll Miss A Revolution’: This one surprised the hell out of us. The verses were built on this rhythmic groove that referenced stuff like Moodymann; Chicago and Detroit techno stuff. The choruses burst out into this mysterious ‘Cities Of Gold’ type of thing, which was quite unexpected. We wrote this very strange-sounding chorus that we felt people wouldn’t have expected [to see] coming. It felt like a bit of a stylistic triumph for us.
For the full story, visit Junior. For more Cut Copy, visit their website. Part 1 of a 3-part ‘making of Zonoscope‘ video series embedded below.
Elsewhere: a ‘first listen’ review of Zonoscope, for The Vine.
You mentioned your style of guitar playing. I’ve always been fascinated by Foals’ needly, palm-muted riffs. Were there any particular artists that inspired that style of playing?
Andrew McManus Presents always set a per-transaction ticket limit for their shows in an attempt to curb scalping. The ticket limit “varies from show to show, but is always in place. We also monitor eBay and other similar auction sites,” the promoter says. “Anyone found selling our tickets for profit runs the risk of being reported and having their listing removed, or even having their tickets cancelled. I don’t think sites like eBay should intervene on their own, but if a promoter tells them to take something down, they should. And for the most part, they’re pretty good at doing that for you.”
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Brisbane natives 
Brisbane’s 
“I’m still a huge fan of putting on an album and listening to it all the way through. It’s very rare to experience an album that you can listen to from start to finish, and not get bored. It’s very rare to experience that, and it’s one of the things you look forward to in life, as a music fan – that next band that you’ll become completely obsessed with.” When questioned about the free MP3 downloads offered on the band’s Last.FM profile, Donaldson continues: “It’s still good for people to be able to download a song in reasonable quality, just in case they are thinking about downloading the full album. Because we’ve basically arrived at the situation where you can download a song for free, get a feel for the quality of it, and then decide whether you want to waste your bandwidth on it!”
It’s a valid comment, given that hip-hop song structures are perhaps more reliant on narrative than their rock counterparts. When asked about digital distribution’s effect on the album format, Levinson concedes: “It’s slowly changing people’s attitudes and expectations toward consumption of music. We’re in a transition period where albums retain a huge significance – but some signs suggest it’s disappearing. Stranger things have happened and trends don’t always result in their predicted outcome, though.”
Regardless, Jackson’s enormous sales in the US simply couldn’t have eventuated ten years ago. Record stores inventories would’ve been exhausted across the country, and compact disc factories would’ve rushed to press more discs to meet the demand. Both of these outcomes still eventuated, but instead of experiencing weeks-long delays, music consumers have the option of instant online gratification: his 2.3 million download count resulted in six Jackson tracks appearing in the Billboard top ten.
At a national level, ARIA’s 
To elaborate on the latter example: picture the average album you’d buy from a store – perhaps not in this era, since both CD shelf space and CD merchants continue to dwindle – but ten years ago. Hypothetically, the disc is likely to be front-loaded with some great songs. They’re the ones that you’re likely to have heard before you bought the album. These strategically-placed songs are the ones that either – or both – the band and record label wanted you to hear first and enjoy first.
That listening habit was exploded when CD burning technology allowed listeners to compile the circular equivalent of mixtapes, without the cassette-associated fuss. As the audio filetype known as MP3 became easier for the masses to acquire online, consumer attitudes to music further deviated from the past when the first digital audio players became available in the late 1990s.
In 2009, artists shouldn’t automatically sprint toward the album endpoint as a result of historical programming. Their creative output shouldn’t be stretched to meet the 45 minute/12 track (whichever comes first) expectation, just so that the parties involved can proudly call it an album. In an era where more music is being written, recorded and performed each day than at any other point in history, an artist shouldn’t throw together words, chords and beats just to meet an expectation built upon a decades-old concept.