Cut Copy Take 'Zonoscope' Leak as Compliment

With Cut Copy's new record, 'Zonoscope' fewer than two weeks away from being released, the Australian dance-rockers aren't fazed by the fact that the album has already leaked online.

"I guess it's a bit of the nature of the beast," guitarist Tim Hoey tells Spinner. "It's really out of our hands, especially once you finish the record; it's kind of sitting around on people's desks for months on end. In a way, it kind of felt like we dodged a bullet. It could have leaked three months out."

Not that the band's label didn't try to put the premature sharing to a stop.

"I think it was kind of an impossible task. Kind of like that carnival game -- I think it's called Whack a Mole -- where you have to hit all the little moles that pop out of the doors with a hammer, but it just gets progressively harder until it's impossible," says Hoey. "It's flattering in some ways that there seems to be some anticipation for this record. It's great that people are really excited by it."

Their tunes might have been hijacked, but the band is counting on the album's artwork to entice people to track down an actual copy of the LP. The electronic version of the record's cover, which features the art of late Japanese artist Tsunehisa Kimura, doesn't nearly do it justice.

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"In a way, [the art] was kind of a metaphor for what we were doing and what we were trying to achieve with the record, which was more man-made machines and elements taken over by natural phenomenon. Our record is very much organic sounds contrasted against more machine-made, mechanical kinds of sounds," says Hoey.

"A lot of people commented on Kimura's work in the past, that it's quite doomsday and apocalyptic imagery. Rather than the destruction, we saw it as a really calming image in that it was creating a new world. What we wanted to do with this album was create something that you put on and listen to, get completely immersed in and then time becomes irrelevant."

Cut Copy also want you immersed in their live show, which they're revamping with exclusive video content, some of which they advertised as extras on their site.

"We've been spending the last month reimagining our live show and stripping away what we've done before, and building a show around the album, a show that reflects the album a bit more instead of just going out there and playing the songs," Hoey says. "So we're excited. It's certainly nothing like anything we've done before."