What's a Zonoscope?

The most obvious definition: it’s the title of Cut Copy’s third album.

Out Feb. 8 -- and already streaming here -- it’s a record that takes the atmospheric synth-pop of the Australian outfit’s 2008 breakthrough In Ghost Colours into a psychedelic jungle of tribal percussion and big ‘80s synths.

Beyond the album title, though, a “Zonoscope” is pretty much whatever you’d care to define it as.

That’s because it’s a word of Cut Copy’s invention, the band’s guitarist Tim Hoey explains -- and, possibly, it’s a place, thing and sound, too.

“It was also like an instrument,” he says, just to make things more confusing. “Like, any time we were stuck for an idea for a song we would say, ‘Go get the Zonoscope’ And we knew what that meant and how a song would take shape from there.

“It’s many things,” he says. “It’s an actual thing and it’s a bit of a kind of ideology or a method for working. It’s ambiguous, and we’ve kept it that way, but you can definitely hear it on every song on the record,” he says. (The “last 10 minutes of ‘Sun God’” is a particularly good example, he hints -- referring to the 15-minute album closer, a track that transforms from fist-pumping pop song to hypnotic synth instrumental.)

“It just is. I can’t really explain it,” Hoey says. “The Zonoscope is a word I used for this world we created. It’s the whole idea of looking at a world where time becomes irrelevant. Zonoscope is the lens you use to view this world.”

Let’s just agree that Zonoscope -- both the album and the nonsense term -- is a sonic fantasyland for the band.

Records, however, aren’t made in imaginary spaces, they’re made in real-life studios -- whether of the bedroom or professional variety. But according to Hoey, the real-life place that Zonoscope was created in was so removed from ordinary life, it felt just as much like the band’s own little world.

Back in June 2009, the band -- Hoey, frontman Dan Whitford, drummer Mitchell Dean Scott and bassist Ben Browning -- were ready to start on the record and needed a place to work. What they found, after taking the suggestion of a friend, was a warehouse on the outskirts of the Melbourne suburbs. “We just got in there, and it was perfect,” Hoey says. “It was basically one big, open, cavernous space,” he says, “and all that was in there was old vintage music equipment that I think belonged to The Little River Band, and apart from that there was nothing. … So we had to build a studio from scratch.”

They brought in their own stuff -- instruments, recording equipment, abandoned mattresses (“We didn’t really have the funds to build a proper drum room, so we figured we could do the same thing with old mattresses tied up,” Hoey laughs). There was little heat, Hoey says, and even littler contact with the outside world. And for a full 12 months they’d commute from Melbourne daily to write and record. (A series of behind-the-scenes videos posted online offer a glimpse into their DIY workspace.)

“And that’s where the idea of creating a world came from, because we’d come out to this warehouse in what felt like the middle of nowhere, no heating and stuff,” Hoey explains.

For the making of Cut Copy’s 2008 album, In Ghost Colours, the band reportedly put themselves through a similar self-exile, holing themselves up in New York City with producer and DFA Records co-owner Tim Goldsworthy.

This time, though, Cut Copy’s musical quarantine yielded a much different experience, Hoey says. “It gave us a lot of freedom because we didn’t have an expensive studio this time around.” Nor were they responsible for as many “expensive personnel.” Frontman Dan Whitford produced Zonoscope; mixing was done much later when the band travelled to Atlanta this past summer to work with Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley, Deerhoof).

“It gave us the freedom to spend a lot of time together in a room and experiment with different sounds,” Hoey says. “We can be completely immersed in the process and not have too much outside information compromising the music, unless it was stuff we brought in like old records or films or stuff like that.” (Incidentally, their tastes included everything from Talking Heads and Brian Eno to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and early ‘90s acid-house.)

Hoey describes what they developed as a “reimagining of the Cut Copy sound” -- though he adds that “we certainly kept the pop music influence that runs throughout every Cut Copy record.”

They also crafted more than just the 11 tracks that appear on Zonoscope’s song cycle, Hoey reveals.

“We found we had so much material left over from this record that we could easily put together another record in like a month if we wanted to,” he says -- something rather unprecedented given the band has released three albums in 10 years.

Plans to make good on his proposition, however, seem spotty at the moment. “We’d like to,” Hoey says of releasing the material -- songs he says were left off Zonoscope only because they didn’t have the time to finish them “to the extent we were happy with” before hooking up with Ben H. Allen. Once the band completes its touring commitments, Hoey says they’ll revisit those tracks. “I think we’d like to find an outlet for this music whether it’s not necessarily a new Cut Copy album, or, you know, something we can just put out there.”

Currently touring in their native Australia, the band is in the midst of a world tour that brings them to Canada in April.

Cut Copy’s Zonoscope arrives Feb. 8.

Cut Copy’s Canadian tour dates include:

Montreal, April 5

Toronto, April 7

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