The Art Of Letting Go

Only now, after a decade in the game, is it apparent just how influential and inspiring Cut Copy have been to the Australian music scene. Not only is their sonic blueprint referenced across the landscape – from Empire Of The Sun and Gypsy & The Cat to Gold Fields and Rüfüs – but they're also overseas trailblazers, taking electronic music into territories previous uninhabited by Aussie acts. The Down Under dance explosion that's happening in the US right now – thank Cut Copy. Not that Tim Hoey would say such a thing.

“I don't know if that's really up for me to say. We have had bands come up to us and say some of our records have been an influence on them, which is very humbling and really amazing, but it's always hard to say that you've been an influence on someone – it kind of feels narcissistic or something.”

The turning point for the Melbourne group was their second album, 2008's chart-topping In Ghost Colours, cut in New York at DFA Studios with lauded musician, producer and label don Tim Goldsworthy.

“Making that record was very different to [2004 debut] Bright Like Neon Love, which was made in mine and [Cut Copy founder] Dan Whitford's bedroom,” Hoey laughs. “We learnt a lot from that process, working in a proper studio with a producer, it was really cool, but every record – every day – has felt like a bit of a turning point for us, because we're constantly learning new things and adapting it to our writing when we move on to the next project.”

That mindset is obvious on the quartet's latest work, 2013's Free Your Mind, and it extends into the overarching theme, one of togetherness and unity. Hoey says there's a “subversive nature” to the band's fourth full-length thanks to its unabashed positivity and uplifting energy – a path, and perhaps a technique, that all of Cut Copy found interesting to explore.

“The songs [are] very upbeat and immediate, so the transition from the studio to the stage for this record has probably been easier than any other record we've worked on – it's in the spirit it was recorded in as a band. All the new material has been going over really well, and we've had a lot of people saying that seeing the record played live has put it in a whole different light, so that's really cool.”

Recently home as part of this year's Future Music Festival, Cut Copy are returning again to make the most of a seven-day gap in their world tour schedule, playing their first Australian headline shows since winning an ARIA Award for 2011 album, Zonoscope. Hoey says the band want to reward fans for their patience and continuing support, and will unleash the complete sensorial experience with Cut Copy's biggest production yet.

“We're bringing all the video and lighting stuff with us that we've got going on with this current tour; it's really exciting and really cool – it's kind of 'epic',” he chuckles. “We're bringing the whole show back to Australia, which will be fun because we didn't really get to do that on Future or Golden Plains. A lot of the video stuff that we did in the lead-up to the record has somehow been implemented into the live show.

“It's very much about capturing this almost ethereal, spiritual experience, this idea of people coming together, and I think the show really emphasises that even further. And it's been cool doing these shows and seeing the way people have been reacting to it. Maybe it has made them see the record in a new light? But it's very much taking the concept of the record and making it a bit more immediate for people.”

And in direct correlation with the transcending appeal of Free Your Mind, Cut Copy are having more fun on stage than ever before. “Five minutes before we go on stage [and] we're absolutely exhausted because we've travelled across all these different countries and cities for weeks and weeks and then as soon as you walk on stage and see the crowd and see how they're reacting it totally resets the clock for you and we very much feed off that. Then when we come off stage we just curl up in a ball on the floor.

“But that's one thing, wherever we go all around the world, people always say they have a lot of fun at our shows, and sometimes we'll go to cities and people will tell us they never see a crowd move like that or engage with a band like that. That's exactly what we want to do, that's exactly what we want to hear when we go somewhere.”