A Guide To Vinyl With Cut Copy

Australian dance group Cut Copy have tasted success in recent years that has seen them dominate the world stage playing festivals and sold out shows all over including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Primavera Sound.

Recently they’ve toured the States, South America and are currently in Europe before heading off to China for a series of festival appearances, they’ll then be heading back to Australian shores – much to the excitement of fans – for their first headline shows in three years.

Even whilst on the tour bus travelling from country to country, the gents still find the time to listen and discover new music. Considering themselves as ‘‘music historians, although not academic in any way’’ hunting and searching for records, and the appreciation for the search for records, is something the group holds in high esteem.

‘’We do listen to a lot of new music on the road. We do a lot of record shopping. We get into town, we try and find a really good coffee place and then if there’s a good record store we can get to we try to hit that up as well.’’

Packing their suitcases with vinyl over clothes, we had a chat to Ben Browning, the bass player from the now quartet, about what every Cut Copy fan needs to know about his records, where he likes to find them and what’s hot at the moment.

Favourite Record Store:

‘’There’s one in Melbourne called Licorice Pie Records, which is in Prahran on High Street – that’s an amazing store. It’s been there for years and we’ve always been able to go there and find something that’s really really great. I’ll give that place a plug ‘cos it’s awesome.’’

Most Sought After Record:

‘’I’ve actually been trying to find a copy of a Kinks record from the 60’s called The Kinks Are In The Village Green Preservation Society. I mean, I know the record back to front; I would be purely getting it so it was in my collection. It’s just one of those ones. I saw it once in Amsterdam and I was choosing between that and an original pressing of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and I wish I had gotten both because I ended up choosing Pet Sounds and I’ve never seen the Kinks record since. That was four years ago. Of course, I could probably just go on Discogs or some website like eBay and find it but that sort of kills the fun for me, I like to find it in stores.’’

Record Spinning At The Moment:

‘I’ve actually been playing this Phillip Glass record, which I don’t know if many people know him but it’s not really dance music or pop music. It’s one of his sort of early 80’s records called Glass Works and it’s got some amazing pieces on it and I’ve just been playing that over and over. I’ve also got a good collection of Yellow Magic Orchestra albums which are like this Japanese sort of proto-techno sort of band.’’

Records All Cut Copy Fans Should Own:

‘’The KLF, which is this kind of early 90’s almost experimental production idea from Britain that ended up having these massive mega-hits. They also had these ambient records and chill out records, they had a famous album called Chill Out and I think some of that stuff was almost like a cornerstone to some of the stuff we’ve been doing on this record.’’

Record Store Day Release:

To celebrate the headline tour back on Australian shores the group will be treating fans to a previously unreleased track ‘In These Arms Of Love’. Recorded in the sessions for Free Your Mind fans had an opportunity to get their hands on a copy on Record Store Day that has sadly, just passed.

‘’We made quite a few songs for Free Your Mind that didn’t make it onto this album. Not for any particular reason other then what we thought was the best flow or songs that went together were. The songs that we left off we thought were really great songs and we really wanted to find a way for them to come out. Putting something out on Record Store Day that was unique and separate from the record was really exciting for us and hopefully people will appreciate it.’’