Zonoscope was dreamt in the comedown of In Ghost Colours, the album which cemented Cut Copy as a global sensation. Their perpetual touring cycle found the band headline a stage at Lollapalooza, become the first Australian act to play Colombia since INXS, have fire marshals shut down an LA performance mid-set as crowds began to buckle the seams of the Henry Fonda Theatre and be raced to the Pitchfork Festival via police escort following a cancelled flight.
After over two years of exhilarating chaos, frontman Dan Whitford bunkered down at home to flesh out rough synth and vocal skeletons, before heading into the studio with the band to bring these textured grooves to life. Whitford describes the wonderland which he set out to create with Tim Hoey, Mitchell Scott and Ben Browning, "All the way along we had this weird vision of a tropical, jungle, tribal sound. A place or an idea that we wanted to reach with some of the songwriting; to explore a looping hypnotic trance and revise the whole palette of what Cut Copy was about."
Rather than fighting the strictures of conventional studios, the band produced the album on their own terms in a warehouse located in Melbourne's northern suburbs. Minds ran wild with a free approach to experimentation during elastic sessions held in a space littered with piles of vintage studio equipment and instruments. Cheaply decking out the makeshift playground with drum enclosures built from pyramids of op-shop mattresses, the surroundings facilitated a full-length of uncompromised high fidelity. After spending months in this low pressure environment, they were able to fully realize their aural utopia of organic psychedelia intersecting with repetitive robotics.
Part 1 of 2: The making of LP3:
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