I can’t even remember where I first heard them, which is a crap start to this. It would have been in the middle of 2005, and it had to have been:

“Saturdays”, from Bright Like Neon Love (2004)

Download audio file (?f=Cut Copy - Saturdays)

At the time, I was probably really into handclaps (actually, I’ll probably never not be into handclaps), and I must have loved the low vocals that sound like they’re being filtered but largely aren’t. More than that, I think I was drawn to the fact that this song gets you feeling like it’s about a solid Good Time, but is really about a disconnect and a question of requite.

Bright Like Neon Love really broke it open for me. I must have listened to that shit like 20 times while walking to work and from work. There was the musical optimism that I crave in pop, but at almost every point it’s countered by longing and regret and I loved it. Maybe it’s an easy thing for musicians to put sap in happy music, and for the message to hit home while my defenses are down, but I feel like it’s a fair shake to be disarmed by a band, given my own tendency to de-fang music by analyzing the shit out of it.

Going Nowhere

A couple of remixes of Bright Like Neon Love tracks were produced in 2005. “Saturdays” got some treatments, but I’ve only heard Headman’s version. “Future” — a patient and stacked track, full of a million warps and layered fades and swooshing — got some more attention too.

The “Future” reworks are pretty ragged, though. I fully do not understand what the shit is up with the !!! remix, and the Zongamin version is just goofy, but I’ve never been a big Zongamin fan anyway (besides “Bongo Song”, which is pretty unfuckwithable).

But the Chromeo mix is out of control.

“Future (Chromeo Remix)”, from Future (2005)

Download audio file (?f=Cut Copy - Future (Chromeo Remix))

To start with, it sounds like a Chromeo song, so you sort of know what you’re getting into. The complexity of the synths has been dialed way back, and I think that goes a long way towards creating a swagger and a carelessness that a lot of Cut Copy’s songs seem to lack. Anyway, I think it’s a total groover.

After all of that, I went digging into their catalog, and came up with I Thought of Numbers, from 2001. Wikipedia calls this an EP, but it’s 7 songs, and feels like an album to me. It’s definitely different from the stuff they’d be doing three years later. In fact, listening to it now, I’m realizing that a lot of it sounds like The Avalanches.

Just did a bit of looking, and it looks like The Avalanches and Cut Copy are both from Melbourne, and are both on Modular. They both put out albums in 2001, so I’ve got to believe there’s some connection here. Maybe it’s already well documented, but whatever. Compare and contrast:

“Glittering Clouds”, by Cut Copy, from I Thought of Numbers (2001)

Download audio file (?f=Cut Copy - Glittering Clouds)

“A Different Feeling”, by The Avalanches, from Since I Left You (2001)

Download audio file (?f=The Avalanches - A Different Feeling)

And before we jump forward in time, check out the video for the title song off Cut Copy’s first 7″:

1981

OK. So now it’s like late 2006, and it’s been a little while since I’ve thought of Cut Copy. I’ve been spending a lot more time with German techno, sort of catching up with the Kompakt and Bpitch and Get Physical catalogs, and then one day Fabriclive 29 falls into my lap. My earbrains get dominated for weeks.

“I Wish You Were Gone”, by Joakim, from Cut Copy: Fabriclive 29 (2006)

Download audio file (?f=Joakim - I Wish You Were Gone)

I’d known about Fabric in London for a couple of years; probably since Jacques Lu Cont’s mix (Fabriclive 09) in 2003, which I still listen to frequently. But I hadn’t yet decided to fill in the blanks in my Fabric/Live album collection. Cut Copy’s work on Fabriclive 29 totally sold me on the importance of those mixes, and I’ve kept up since.

Now, in this case, CC are really just selectors, and I can’t claim to know where the original artists and remixers begin and end, but this set is great. A mix like this lets an artist project a sort of origin/destination story out into the world, even if it’s not true. The crossing up of dancepunk, which was starting to sound a bit stale on its own, with some mod disco and electro — two styles that would continue to rise over the next two years — struck me as being a pretty prescient move. Another solid inclusion on this mix was Erol Alkan’s Durrr Durrr Durrrrrr edit of Justice’s “Waters of Nazareth”. Justice had a fair bit of attention at this point, but a lot of people thought (wrongly) that they were out to make techno for metallers or some shit. Anyway, it seems likely to me that the exposure on 29 helped them along in their ascent.

“Bang Bang” by In Flagranti, from Cut Copy: Fabriclive 29 (2006)

Download audio file (?f=In Flagranti - Bang Bang)

This mix does have its weak tracks (none of which I’ve posted): MSTRKRFT were a gimme, even then, Ciccione Youth’s “Into the Grooveway” is boring until 1:15, when Justice kicks down the door, and the Whitey remix of “Going Nowhere” has got blood parasites or something; it’s anemic and lurching, and sounds like a sythesized lung collapsing.

What surprised me about this mix, though, is that it doesn’t really serve as a document for where Cut Copy would wind up. It makes sense now that I’ve read a bit more, and understand that the Fabriclive mix was a release under the Cut Copy name, by their frontman, Dan Whitford, who spends a lot of his time DJ’ing. But I do believe that this mix is a strong indicator of the band’s taste, and that Fabriclive 29 ranks close to Erlend Oye’s DJ-Kicks in terms of breadth and form innovation.

“Out the Door (Super Discount Remix)” by Whomadewho, from Cut Copy: Fabriclive 29 (2006)

Download audio file (?f=Whomadewho - Out the Door (Super Discount Remix))

Right, so there’s a new album out. It’s called In Ghost Colours, and it’s phenomenal. Simon and I have probably run through it 80+ times between the two of us. It’s seriously on some New New Romanticism shit — there are times when Whitford sounds a bit like Bernard Sumner — which FL29 indicates is one of the band’s touchstones. But I can’t stress how fresh and honest this thing sounds to me. IGC seems like an album that’s aware of where it came from, but is fully capable of bringing the contemporary keyboard jams that we’re about now.

There’s a nod to the abstraction of I Thought of Numbers in this interlude:

“We Fight For Diamonds”, from In Ghost Colours (2008)

Download audio file (?f=Cut Copy - We Fight For Diamonds)

But the hammer really comes out when they own up to their emotive potential, lampoon it with a huge fucking sax, and then convince me that feelings are real, and that I love music like this as much as I love any drug or fuck peak:

“Hearts on Fire”, from In Ghost Colours (2008)

Download audio file (?f=Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire)

This album succeeds where a lot of others in the current Aussie synth scene don’t. It’s gotta be said that there is some kind of shared fever down there these days, with The Presets, Midnight Juggernauts, Van She, Muscles, etc, all cranking out likable if silly dance tracks. Modular is clearly responsible for corraling all of this, and there’s a lot of credit to be given out for the sheer fun of this stuff, but I feel like Cut Copy is one of the only bands that escapes the quagmire of inauthenticity that so many of their outbacked labelmates seem to get stuck in.

I think Cut Copy’s music triumphs by elevating the common and mundane parts of ourselves into something precious. When I walk down the street to this music, I feel like I’m living a larger and more permanent life than I really am. And I’ve found that that feeling does not have to be a simple illusion that quits when I shut the music off. I’m the sort of person for whom brash hope and real emotion are propulsive forces towards a better version of myself. Cut Copy is not really progressive, musically, but it’s didactic in a really unassuming way, like the audiobook dictionary my parents played for me while I was asleep as a child. Their music is a true thing for me, and I find it hard to argue with true things.

Additional Links

Cut Copy on Wikipedia
Cut Copy on MySpace
Cut Copy on Modular People
Cut Copy’s outstanding “So Cosmic Mixtape”