Music
Cut Copy look back on In Ghost Colours, the album that defined an era
12 years on from the seminal release, we spoke to frontman Dan Whitford about "bloghaus", the Melbourne electro scene of yesteryear and what went into creating their beloved LP.
When Cut Copy released their first album, Bright Like Neon Love, the local music landscape was a different place. “I really felt like there wasn’t much of a scene for electronic music in Australia,” says frontman Dan Whitford. “There was more indie and guitar based stuff, but nothing that was in the mould of what we were doing.”
That was 2004. In the four years between their debut and what came next, everything changed. Around the mid-noughties, a new mutation of electro took hold in clubs around the world and didn’t let go. The sound was a little bit different depending where on the globe you were, but it was all noisy, fun and high energy. In Paris, it was all about the Ed Banger crew led by the likes of Justice, Uffie and Mr Oizo. In the US, Diplo, A-Trak and Steve Aoki played crappy 128kbps remixes at rammed club nights before they pivoted to superstar DJ success.
But in Australia the ruling flavour was indie-dance, a crossover genre led by bands who fused live instrumentation with electronic production. Toting acts like The Avalanches and The Presets as well as Whitford and co, the now-defunct label Modular brought international attention to a new era of Australian music.
Cut Copy’s second album, In Ghost Colours, arrived in 2008 at the zenith of this moment and became one of its defining records. The album spawned the huge singles ‘Hearts on Fire’ and ‘Lights and Music’, was a #1 ARIA hit, secured critical success and made Cut Copy global music darlings. 12 years on, it stands as one of Australian electronic music's most important albums.
To reflect on its legacy, we spoke to Dan Whitford about his memories of making In Ghost Colours and the very new, very exciting electro scene of the time. Read on for our interview.
First up I wanted to touch on Bright Like Neon Love. Did you feel like that album had created any expectations of what In Ghost Colours should sound like?
Not really, I actually just felt like doing Bright Like Neon Love opened up possibilities for us. Because really, by the end of touring that album our goals were fairly humble -- we thought, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have a gig at The Tote or The Corner, to fill a venue with 200 or 500 people? And by the end of touring Bright Like Neon Love, that’s what was happening. We were getting good crowds for us at that point in time so we said okay, let’s see how far we can push this with where we go next. So I think it just created a sense of possibility.
What was different about recording In Ghost Colours? Did you have more resources, a different approach, or more of a vision for it?
When I look back now I think we had a really strong vision for it. I certainly did in writing it, where I was very conscious of exactly what kind of music I liked and wanted to be making. Things started clicking in the process of making that album.
I loved My Bloody Valentine, but I also loved Homework by Daft Punk, but I also loved Time by Electric Light Orchestra. And I started seeing these things that were disconnected beginning to connect in the music that we were making. Suddenly, these sounds and ideas were existing all at once in these songs. They could be big club hits, potentially, but also sort of have the spaciness of the layered rock music that I liked, and have the harmonies or weird psychedelic aspects of music that I liked in the 70s. It really started to take on a bit more of its own identity -- more than the sum of its parts.
What are your memories of making that album?
I guess the thing that I loved is we really didn’t spend any time recording [Bright Like Neon Love] whatsoever. This time around, with In Ghost Colours, we had a lot more lead time. More options, more opportunity. We got to work with Tim Goldsworthy, who was one half of DFA with James Murphy. I spoke to him on the phone and he immediately picked out three or four of my favourite records, just based on listening to the music I’d sent him as demos. And I knew immediately that he was the right guy for us. We went across to New York and were there for maybe six weeks or so; we just dived in and immersed ourselves in making an album.
And was DFA a label you’d had much interaction with before then?
Yeah, we’d done a few things for them. We were part of that world and a lot of our friends in New York either worked at the label or were closely affiliated with it. So it felt like we were sort of in that family, even though we were with Modular. I think they even said, “if you weren’t signed to Modular we’d be putting out your music”.
When the album came out, it was such a huge success. What did that feel like?
Well, quite honestly, the success part of it was a bit unexpected. Even though we were being ambitious with the album and it felt like this could be big in its own world, I don’t think we really thought it would be successful in the way that it was.
Due to some of the scheduling of our recording, we decided to put out one song and then go off and record the rest of the album. That first song was ‘Hearts on Fire’ and we basically released that, went to New York, and didn’t really know what happened with it. Then we came back to Australia and everyone was saying, “that song’s a big hit”. But we were completely unaware of that. We kind of missed that because we weren’t there for it.
But when the album came out, we were playing a festival, and I have this memory of walking back to our band room after our set and we saw Pete from our label walking towards us with his finger up in the air. We thought he was just saying hi, or something. But he was actually saying ‘number one’ -- that our album had come out, and it was number one. So I vividly remember that moment and being a little bit shocked. Because before that, the only people who had number one records were like, The Living End or Grinspoon. People who made music like us didn’t have big records in Australia. That just didn’t feel like it was the scene, but obviously things were changing.
The only people who had number one records were like, The Living End or Grinspoon. People who made music like us didn’t have big records in Australia.
And had you set out to make music for clubs with that album?
We definitely did. After Bright Like Neon Love, we really got very immersed in club culture. Part of that was going to the UK and finding club nights and people that inspired us.
But also back in Melbourne, we had some amazing club nights and amazing clubs, like Honkytonks, which was such an iconic place for that era of club music. It really was the unofficial home to a lot of the bands and DJs that ended up making quite big music after that. We were there every week and that really gave us the landscape for where our music could sit. We knew the vibe of it so well and we knew that once we’d written that music, it was going to do well in that world, because that was the world we were existing in.
Who were the other acts circling Honkytonks at that time?
I guess people like Midnight Juggernauts were big into that scene. A lot of really great DJs came through and played as well. So it became this thing where the boundaries between what club music was and what live music was started to get broken down.
I remember one year we did our own Christmas party at Honkytonks, and we basically set up the stage in the middle of the dancefloor and played live with everyone dancing all around us. And it sort of was a moment where that distinction between something being live or something being a DJ thing got a little bit blurred or broken down. These days, obviously, that’s less of an amazing thing, because I think people have embraced the idea that these things can exist at the same time in music. But back then it was a lot more like -- you were either an indie kid or you’re a dance kid or you’re a punk kid, or whatever. You couldn't be both. So the idea that we were melting those barriers was interesting.
What was the Melbourne electro scene like back then?
Yeah, I mean it was obviously quite healthy. There were probably a lot more bands floating around in Melbourne at that time compared to Sydney, it just happened to be that way. I guess we had more venues and more things going on. But it had gone from something that I thought of as a bit of a niche to all of a sudden being something that was gaining a bit of mainstream attention and success.
So it was interesting, over the period of a few years coinciding with when In Ghost Colours came out was when that scene changed. It went from something that was a bit obscure where electro club nights would have like, 60 people there, to all of a sudden you’d have a packed club of 800 people and a line around the block to get in. Things really blew up for a while there.
And were you aware at the time you were part of this bloghaus movement, or did that classification get applied later, in retrospect?
I think it came a bit later. Obviously these terms that get thrown around often aren’t coined by the artists that they’re referring to. And to be honest, I always felt like bloghaus was not a term I really identified with.
To be honest, I always felt like bloghaus was not a term I really identified with.
As far as the scene that we were involved with, to me it had more to do a shared appreciation for certain types of music. For us and say Midnight Juggernauts, we would kind of listen to a lot of the same stuff -- like weird 70s pop and psychedelic music, but then also whatever the latest release was on Ed Banger was. And obviously in the Australian sense, Modular was a big part of pushing that idea of a scene, so maybe it gets thought of in terms of "the Modular sound". Certainly internationally, it got talked about that way.
I was going to ask if there was a sense internationally that people were really interested in the music that was coming out of Australia at that time?
A hundred percent, yeah, we got asked about it so much in interviews. There was a real awareness of it.
What was it like to be part of the Modular gang then? Was there a camaraderie between you and the other labelmates?
Yeah, definitely. It’s funny, we connected before Modular had anything to do with any of us, really. We didn’t know The Presets until they were signed with Modular but, for instance, we’d done parties for Bang Gang DJs before they were involved in Modular. But there was definitely a sense that we all came from a similar perspective, and a lot of it was probably just that we were of that age to want to be out partying as much as we could. We were living life to its fullest in those years and that was definitely a factor that we all shared.
I wanted to talk about Nevereverland, which is another piece of really iconic Australian music history. What was that tour like?
It was amazing. Even before Modular had discussed the idea of putting on this show, it was one of these daydream path ideas that me and the band and some of our mates would talk about after a big night. We’d be saying, “How amazing would it be if we actually got Daft Punk to come out to Australia and they could play in the middle of Central Australia somewhere and they could do this pilgrimage and everyone would come out and see it?” So it was funny that a year or so later, that idea actually came to the fruition. I don’t know if we gave Modular the idea when we were all half cooked, but yeah, it was quite an incredible tour.
I remember the first show being really stressed out and absorbed in our show; we had other things distracting us. But the second night in Melbourne, I remember actually getting to go out into the crowd and soak up the whole thing. It was a really life changing experience to see them.
Did you have much contact with Daft Punk?
Yeah, a little bit. I’d met them a few years earlier making Bright Like Neon Love, because I was recording that in Paris and Phillippe, our engineer, knew them quite well. But those guys are actually quite shy and even though they’re doing this amazing show, they’re not super outgoing people. But we did have a few good nights with them. I think after a few wines they let their guard down a bit and definitely knew how to have a good time.
Looking back on In Ghost Colours now, how do you feel about that album? Do you have a lot of pride and affection for it?
It’s quite hard to even have perspective on it now, because it’s just become such a big part of what our music careers have been. Like, how many times have we played ‘Lights and Music’ and ‘Hearts on Fire’ in our live sets? Probably thousands. But it’s special to us, and represents a special time, and was definitely the moment in our career things pushed through to another level.
I don’t have any kids, but I imagine that’s what it’s like: you see them go into the world and all of a sudden they take on their own life. And that’s what that album has done -- it’s transcended whatever we thought it was going to be. And it means a lot to other people as well. So I’m grateful we’ve managed to have that kind of connection.
