Cut Copy - Zonoscope (2011) [Modular] // Grade: B-

Simon Reynold’s Rip It Up and Start Again has become a quasi bible for modern music bloggers too young to have lived through the 80’s. In it, Reynold’s carefully maps out that golden era after the DIY movement realized that their soundtrack didn’t have to rely on sped up rockabilly and sloppy pub rock. The music of Cut Copy’s new album almost sounds like a companion piece, as the Australian Nu Wave group voyage through a musical history lesson.

Cut Copy have always been a little more scholarly than their fidget house cohorts in Europe. Earlier albums had a way of fusing the sounds of Eno, Italo and Krautrock with what was rocking the main floors of dancehalls across the world. For this, their third long player, they seem to have perfected a crispy clean new sound.  Whereas older releases kept a little boxy, lo-fi boxy production, this record seems streamlined down to the very last detail.  The tropical funk of “Take Me Over” is far more Haircut 100 than it is A Certain Ratio. “Corner of the Sky” a little closer to bands like Kajagoogoo than the Flexipop rarities most consider e-l337. Still, nothing on this album seems out of place or forced. There is none of that “look at me I’m 80’s Retro” cool factor lurking in the corners of Zonoscope. Instead it sounds like a testament to the futurism that pioneers like Martyn Ware and Green Gartside envisioned.

Despite revisionist history, one always has to keep in mind that Synthpop always had an emphasis on the last syllable. Not pop in a throwaway, commercial sense, but in the deeper sense of Warhol and the Factory.  It is amazing to see that some thirty-three years after Ware and Craig announced the Future, we seem to be living in one that bears quite a resemblance to the Fast Product fluxus they attempted to market and sell.

- Nattymari