“Spiritual. Mind. Journey.” These are the three words that Cut Copy’s drummer Mitchell Scott uses to describe their latest album, ‘Free Your Mind’.
“'Free Your Mind' isn't a concept record exactly, but I guess as we were working on the songs, themes of positivity and connection with music culture, partly from the acid house culture in Britain, and the rave culture, [became] an element of it. It was a time where music brought people together from separate scenes and allowed them to exist in this strange, underground way. That was a large part of it,” Mitchell explains.
American producer Dave Fridmann, who has worked with the likes of Tame Impala, MGMT and The Flaming Lips, mixed the record for Cut Copy, and his psychedelic influence is noticeable.
“It was awesome [working with Dave]. We really got a lot out of that process … He really brings a lot to the process of mixing. He'd often go off on these little tangents in terms of adding in some weird sounds or really bringing out some weird sounds in the record. Often that's the last thing you want, is someone really injecting something into that stage of the process.
“[But] we really found that where he tried something weird or where he tried to inject some personality, more often than not [it was] something that we were really onside with. I think he made a real impact on the record.
“[Psychedelic sounds] where something that kind of appealed to us and I guess it's a part of that intersection between dance music and rock music and the house movement... and [we found] a real nice connection that way.
“That was just something that came out … in writing these songs and working them up, and partly for that reason we thought that Dave might be somebody who could really bring something to the record. Even though it's a lot more dance-focused than a lot of the stuff that he has worked on in the past, we thought he really might be able to bring out some of these really cool elements.”
Mitchell goes on to explain that while Cut Copy's music definitely has an element of 'dance' to it, it goes a lot deeper than that.
“Dance music and club culture and drug use can be fairly intertwined and I guess that's part of dance music culture. [There are] fun things about dance music and being in a club and dancing and all moving together as a crowd. Dance music production is really geared to getting that interaction with [the] crowd, and I think all that stuff works even better on drugs.
“[But] I think that the music that we make and the music that we're inspired to make and listen to incorporates elements of dance music, but it's always in a way that's rewarding to listen to as an album and as a group of songs. It's not just straight up beats to dance to.
“What we try to write are actual songs that are worth listening to at home. And I know that in my formative and teenage years and beyond I was never really into going out to clubs and dancing, so it would seem weird for me to make music that only works in a club.
We like to make something that works just as well taken out of that context.”
With a date with one of Australia’s biggest dance festivals already locked in for March, there’s a glimmer of hope Cut Copy might be planning a national headlining tour beforehand.
“We're doing Future Music Festival, but after that we're still trying to lock things down. We don't have a headline tour of our own yet that we've confirmed, but I am hopeful that around the start of next year sometime, our summer, that we'll be able to get some Australian touring in.”
Cut Copy play Future Music Festival at RNA Showgrounds March 1. ‘Free Your Mind’ is released November 1.
