Cut Copy began in Dan Whitford’s bedroom over 20 years ago…

A Grammy nomination, millions of streams and a number-one album later, and it’s safe to say the group has lasted the test of time. Fellow alumni of the mid-2000s like Van She, Midnight Juggernauts, and Grafton Primary have drifted into obscurity while Cut Copy have bucked that trend, largely due to tracks like indie-pop gem ‘Lights & Music’ and the anthemic ‘Hearts On Fire’ cementing their place within the culture.

This near-icon platform has allowed them to make some of their best music over the past decade. 2016’s immersive instrumental album January Tape feels like one of those specials records that people will be discovering and re-discovering for years to come, and 2020’s Freeze Melt is a compact, experimental journey where pop sensibilities and expressionism tangle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN0K974SAtE

We caught up with Dan before his DJ set with Bloc Party at the Beverly Rooftop in Melbourne for Don Julio 1942 Tequila over the weekend and asked him about his career and the band’s influence, and squeezed some details about the new record out of him… Read it below:

You and Bloc Party have a special relationship – tell us about it?

We’d been going for maybe a year or a year and a half and started to get a bit of overseas interest. And around that time, we had a manager that was living in the UK, and so we were across there a fair bit, and they were this hot band that was getting written up everywhere as the next big thing.

When they came out to Australia for the first time, we were the main support at that show and then over the next few years, I guess we’d just be crossing paths a lot because you end up being on the same circuit. Obviously now, it’s probably almost 20 years ago, but even now we still will run into each other in weird places. So yeah, it’s like we can’t shake each other off.

You guys were at the forefront of a new wave of sound in Australia. Do you hear your influence on “new artists”? How does that feel?

It’s hard to quantify, a little bit. Yeah, I guess obviously you’re listening to the radio and sometimes you hear things and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. That kind of sounds like something I could have made.” Electronic music, particularly live electronic music in Australia, just wasn’t really a thing when we started, and that’s a big part of what we’re about. Back then I guess in Australia, you kind of had to cut your teeth playing with rock bands and there wasn’t a scene for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R1X2TxW5Rk

The DJ scene at that time felt pretty huge, which introduced many non-electro people to Cut Copy…

It definitely was a weird kind of colliding of cultures. Even now when I look back on it, it feels kind of unique. It’s not like it’s been replicated. It’s like a moment in time where I guess a lot of electronic stuff came out with a real aesthetic and personality to it. And it wasn’t just club kids that were into it, it was kids that went to gigs and saw punk bands or other kinds of music that got really psyched on it too.

It hit a tipping point where, I guess at least certainly in Australia and other parts of the world, the mainstream bought into it. Our record went number one, in what would’ve been like 2008 or something. Probably even a year before that, we thought there was zero chance we’d even be in the charts, far less having a number one record. But I think it’s just that weird little chemistry of something that becomes big. All of a sudden it gains momentum, and then it’s a huge snowball boulder rolling down the hill and you can’t stop it.

Cut Copy was born in your bedroom, solo. What’s changed about your songwriting process over the years?

It’s definitely had to change, I think. We all started out in Melbourne, but we’ve ended up with a couple of band members that are living over in the States on different time zones. And I was actually living in Europe for a few years as well, so we really were pretty spread out and forced to work a bit differently. We’ve always had that thing where I guess there’s my brain is the seed to sort of start all these ideas, and I do the songwriting up to a certain point. And then it’s like, “Right. I’d really love to hear what Tim’s going to do with the guitar on this.” Or I’ll get Mitchell in to do some weird percussion, or maybe Ben would have some cool chords to throw on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPbmD8kMB8Q

How do you like your tequila?

I do love a margarita. My favourite cocktail is like a jalapeno margarita, just a slightly upscale margarita with a bit of spice to it. And honestly, on tour, the thing that I spec on our drinks rider is tequila.

You’re frequent re-mixers. Outside of simply putting your spin on something and releasing it, what other things do you get from that process?

It’s actually a good question because I literally just been working on a remix for San Cisco and just sent it off. So I’m fresh to the idea of remixing and I’ve been thinking about it. Obviously it’s nice to put your own spin on someone else’s music, but I find I can kind of try out things in a way that I might not be willing to when I’m writing a Cut Copy song.

You might have your set way of working, like being a little bit blinkered or something when you’re working on your own music, or you know what works and what doesn’t work from the past. But when you’ve got someone else’s track and maybe there’s a different voice on there, different instruments to what you usually use, there’s an opportunity to discover something new. It might be just coming at things from a different angle and trying to work at a different tempo or using different instrumentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7JId794Baw&list=OLAK5uy_mf3usRsrX964EVgExxaz9Jf3lo2Wldr4c

You guys have been Grammy-nominated, toured the world, had a number-one, what do you consider to be your biggest achievement?

I don’t really think about awards and things like that as being of all that much consequence. The thing that excites me is realising how you’ve been a part of someone’s life, just through the music that you’ve made. It’s meant so much to someone that even a decade later or something, they come up to you and go, “When you play that song, it just takes me back to this…” Or, “When I was in this relationship and this thing happened!” Or, “I was really sick and I was listening to your record and I got better.” It’s amazing, the magic of music and somehow just being there in someone’s life and in the special moments, and be a soundtrack to that. It’s really cool.

Tell us about the new record – what’s happening there?

Well, we’re trying to work out how we can do some recording in the next little while. But basically, it’s sounding pretty euphoric, pretty upbeat, compared to the last record, which is a bit more introspective. It was written when I was living over in Europe in the winter. It’s hopefully going to hit the sweet spot for people when they’re watching the show or coming to see us at a festival, a bit more energy to it. But also I think some pretty interesting songwriting. So I’m at that stage where I haven’t gotten the sick of the songs yet, so I’m feeling pretty excited to start finishing some of these tracks!