Brighten The Corners Presents folk neo-classical group Modern Nature at The Smokehouse on Tuesday 12th December 2023. Support from Pre-Alps.
“Beautiful but sad, eerie but tender, Island of Noise feels like a sublime stopover between OK Computer and Kid A, or between the eccentric British folk of the early ’70s and the austere Chicago post-rock of the ’90s. Its songs are subtly overstuffed, brimming with layers of luxurious melody and imaginative variation.” PITCHFORK
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Time: 7.30pm - 11pm
Venue: The Smokehouse, Ipswich
Tickets: £10+bf
Supports: Pre-Alps
Age Restrictions: 14+ (14- 15s must be accompanied by an adult) -
No Fixed Point In Space, the third full-length album by Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature, takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on 2021’s Island Of Noise and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It’s a music that hasn’t been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world.
“With this record,” Cooper explains, “I wanted the music to reflect nature: beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, process and chance. I wanted the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown.”
“The way you see or hear music in your head is abstract and magic… often far more beautiful than what eventually appears on tape. When you sit down with an instrument and begin translating an idea, it quickly conforms. I’ve tried to develop this music without thinking in terms of set rhythms, time signatures, folk or pop structures, syntax; the devices you associate with the music world which I come from. I wanted to make music that was abstract, free and honest, whilst still being predominantly tonal and recognisably song based. New music! It feels like time to make something that no one has heard before.”
Certain moorings – woodwind, percussion, strings and Cooper’s lambent voice – are still present and recognisable from No Fixed Point In Space’s predecessor, Island Of Noise, but the new record marks a shift to utilising musical notation as a point of departure, from which the group explore the space around suggested notes and rhythms to create a semi-improvised, semi-composed ensemble performance. These explorations of partly organised chance were recorded live and directly to tape.
“Part of it is a reaction to what I hear out in the world,” continues Cooper. “Modern Nature’s music has certain threads that run through it. Music is increasingly sterile and informed by the grids and convenience of digital recording. Music needs the swing of humans for it to resonate on any level below the surface.
“I think the most important aspect of that idea is collectivism; the rhythm, melody, timbre, dynamics, all the aspects of music are not the responsibility of one instrument, they are the responsibilities of all the instruments. The vocals are no more important than the bass. That makes the music move in an organically unpredictable way. Like a flock of birds or a school of fish, notes breaking the surface and then disappearing. That’s how I want this music to feel.”
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Pre-Alps is a new project from rural north-west Essex: warped electric folk, taking in instrumental fingerpicking, austere drones and expansive, meditative noise.