Internationally beloved electro dudes Cut Copy have let on exclusively to TheVine, the name, release date and album art of their forthcoming and much-anticipated third album.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Following on from their debut, 2004's Bright Like Neon Love, and the band's international breakthrough, 2008's In Ghost Colours, Zonoscope is described as the band's "most ambitious work yet". From the presser:

Zonoscope is Cut Copy boiled down to their purest form, a suite of futuristic visions built upon primal rhythm tracks. It is at once their most immediate work to date but also their most sonically exquisite. 'Take Me Over' perfectly encapsulates this, its chiming highlife guitars bouncing around tropical percussion reminiscent of an island holiday in a pop song.

"Highlife guitars"? Sign me up. In stark contrast to the creation of In Ghost Colours, which saw the band handing the reigns over to DFA co -boss and engineer/producer Tim Goldsworthy, Zonoscope found the band holing up in a warehouse north of Melbourne to record the new LP their own damn selves. Initially a handful of "rough synth and vocal skeletons" by frontman Dan Whitford (who, as we've seen in the Cut Copy 'Making Of' doco Pt 1, has a pretty sweet and un-rough set-up at home), the band embraced the expansive location and relative autonomy it brought them, taking a lazy six months to craft Zonoscope. From there the result was sent to Atlanta, where the album was mixed by Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley, Deerhunter...and Christina Aguilera). No slouch then.

Whitford says of the songs he created with fellow-Cutters 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.” Which fairly neatly sums up previously heard first, Beach Boys-esque first single 'Where I'm Going'.


Cut Copy - 'Where I'm Going'

How long until we hear the whole thing? Zonoscope will be released on February 4 in Australia, February 7 in the UK and Europe, and February 8 in North America.

Coming next: watch Cut Copy crafting Zonoscope in Part 2 of their 'Making Of' doco right here on TheVine.