Tuesday 26 April 2011

Album Review: Cut Copy. "Zonoscope"


CUT COPY
ZONOSCOPE
©2011 Modular Recordings

One knows, as soon as Cut Copy's third full-length album Zonoscope begins with opening track "Need You Now" and its delightfully delicate marriage of crystalline synths and dreamy guitars, that this Melbourne band's trajectory is true. 


On the 27th January this year, when Cut Copy first released "Need You Now," I'd written:
"Dan Whitford's vocals are as emotive as ever, and the rhythms put forward by Tim Hoey and Mitchell Scott, while tinged with a delicacy and deliberation that bring to mind the best of '80s New Wave, still contain a contemporary edge guaranteed to get asses out there on that fucking dance floor." 
Well! Now that the album's been out for a couple of months, and Cut Copy is poised to return home for their homecoming Australian tour in a week's time, I feel the need to squawk a bit from my little box and declare just how fucking awesome Zonoscope is. A great rollicking song that's perfect for driving can be found in the wonderful "Take Me Over." "Alisa" brings together '60s harmonies with a surf-rock sensibility. The rather surreal "Blink and You'll Miss A Revolution," one of the album's denser tracks, brings to mind some of the house epics that were popular on dance floors back in the early '90s and positively soars at moments. And then there's the experimental "Pharoahs & Pyramids," that's abuzz with cool sound effects, vocal distortions, and a nice bass-y synth line that bumbles merrily along its way. 


BUT – nothing on this great blue Earth could have prepared me for the joyous awesome power of the closing track, "Sun God." Holy crap, it's ... shit, it's just fucking amazing. Fifteen minutes and five seconds of just pure, incredible, and game-changing pop, "Sun God" WILL stop you in your tracks and cause you to say to yourself, "Wait – what? What the hell was that?" And then you'll play it a second time and let its lush brilliance wash over you again. A hypnotic piece of ever-shifting musical ideas, "Sun God" as a whole is made up of several distinct genres, constantly evolving and becoming something else as it charges along on a crazy, wonderful ride. Hyperbole on the part of this blogger? I doubt it. When I listen to it, I can't help but wonder if the boys have been listening to a lot of Kraut Rock; there's a distinct Tangerine Dream feel to the whole affair, with some Can-style percussions thrown in here and there and was that a ghost of Kraftwerk I heard in there at 9:19? Check out the cowbells that kick in at the three-minute mark! Oh, I just love this track; it's worth the price of admission alone. Here – listen to it yourself and see.


 Cut Copy - Sun God by modularpeople 


And here's the video for the first single, "Need You Now."





Cheers, friends, and have a great day!

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