With each Modern Nature record we’ve learned to expect change, welcoming a fresh evolution each time. Demand it, even. From folk to jazz fusion and increasingly sparse instrumentation, enjoying these records is no passive experience, 2023’s No Fixed Point In Space an abstract exploration of the tensions of nature and living. True to form new album The Heat Warps refuses to stay true to any easy prediction.
Exploring the darkness and light and connections, notions of community in 2025 in very real and clear terms, it strides into more conventional song structure with guitars, bass and drums. This not a complete about-turn; what a beautiful record for one thing, uncluttered with space to breathe and think; the pursuit of trying to make sense of the things around us, the world we find ourselves in has long since been part of Modern Nature’s creative identity. Jack Cooper is keen to point out the guitar’s place in Modern Nature’s back catalogue. On the last record it is within each each song, he stresses, albeit with an understated presence. Touring No Fixed Point In Space he noted looseness before locking into rhythms ‘kind of harder, I suppose’, he says, the realisation setting him thinking about what direction to go in next.
On the run-up to preparing for The Heat Warps’ creation, Jack found himself instinctively and affectionately reaching for the guitar with frequency. Got into a headspace with the instrument reminiscent to his relationship as a younger man. A regular and fond habit formed not a ‘meditative thing’ as he puts it, but once the day was done in the evenings after work and parenting, he’d sit and play. First love never dies, does it. ‘It was the same as when I was a teenager, try and work out songs or just be playing, you know, nothing, just messing around, really.’
‘Around that time, I started thinking about guitar again, because I was enjoying it so much, and whether if we had another guitarist or another instrument that was comparable to what the guitar does in a band, we could do something that was more streamlined. And lots of the ways that we’ve worked with Modern Nature is creating a framework for improvisers to play stuff that I’ve written, like scores and things. But it was almost like artificially creating this kind of organicness. Growing it and pushing in one direction. So if we had another guitarist who thought about it in a similar way I did, it could be a lot more streamlined and direct.’
Modern Nature originally a solo project with friends dipping in and out, previous releases had up to an eyewatering 15 contributors. The Heat Warps is the work of a firmly bonded four, Jack and long time collaborators Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers), Jim Wallis, and relative newcomer Tara Cunningham. Jack took part in an improvised night with Heather Roche and Dominic Lash who played on the last Modern Nature record, and Tara. ‘We were playing this one long improvised thing and the way that Tara and I played each other, it was just like – this is I feels like I sound like Paul McCartney “Oh, that’s it!” – but, there was something where like, oh, okay, this is really cool.’
He noted the potential in how they both naturally sung – the dual vocals add a very special texture indeed – and playing guitar, mirroring. Playing with Modern Nature they both move around and colour what Jeff (bass guitar on this record) and Jim (drums) are doing as the rhythm section, and mark a change.
‘Whatever we’ve done, it’s been us three, really,’ he says of the history. ‘And then when we found Tara, it felt like it became a group or a collective. It was a bit of a shift.’
The Heat Warps is named after a blog about Miles Davis’ electrical output, the site’s founder in his formative years borrowing records from his local library noting the phrase stamped in the cover in warning. Jack scribbled the phrase in his notebook. Kept coming back to it. ‘It seemed to sort of conjure up something.’
It sounds like a life lesson, quite profound?
‘It’s that interaction between a physical object, because for the heat to warp something, then there needs to be something for it to warp, doesn’t it? And the elements, or a slightly intangible thing, like heat. How those outside elements can affect like a physical object. It just seemed to fit. I was thinking about calling the album just Modern Nature at one point, but it seemed like everyone was against it!’
As an album it does indeed mark a shift, but as ever the song titles are economic, shall we say? We wouldn’t know ourselves otherwise.
‘A friend said to me “I never know what your songs are called, because they’re just all one word“,’ he laughs.
‘I got to a point where I was like, I think song titles or titles are arbitrary. If you write a lyric, or if you write a poem, something often jumps out as the title. There will be something that’s obvious, but then a lot of the time you’re almost like reverse engineering it. So I just thought with Modern Nature when we started, I was like, they’re just going to have one word title.’ Jack pauses. ‘It’s pretentious isn’t it!’
‘I still think that music can convey a lot more than words. But I still value words and being a songwriter, I’ve always paid a lot of attention to the lyrics. In Modern Nature I’ve poured over words, and I’ve spent months finessing them. The word I always keep coming back to on this record is direct and wanting to make something that was immediate. I think there are a few factors, a few things at play, of why it feels like a shift was important. But to an extent, I felt like we got as far as we could with what we were doing, and it needed a line in the sand.’
He’s been releasing work as Modern Nature since 2019 and reflects on the community built during that time. It’s a two-way street. There are those who’ve enjoyed what he’s done for a long time now, and he considers them when making a record. About 30 or 40 people he pictures and thinks, ‘What will they think? People I’ve met and known along the way who find something about what I do resonates. It all feeds back into it.’
Good community is a precious thing, in the immediate physical realm and away from that. Take the relationship between Modern Nature and audience. The 2023 Murmuration festival a non-amplified affair encouraged a sense of intimacy, and the new Modern Nature email newsletter is a newsy, intelligent missive and gloriously spam-free. Quite the novelty in these click-chasing times. Social media can be a stressful environment. ‘The internet breaks down that thing that we were brought up with, where you think of like artists as being above you in some way,’ he says. ‘It’s bullshit, and the internet did a lot to de-mythologize that. And then social media basically just commodified it. ‘I’ve been subscribing to different people’s sub stacks and newsletters.‘ Jack cites Caught By The River as a favourite. ‘There’s ones that make me feel happy when I see them in my inbox.’
The Heat Warps is lyrically more focussed than previous works. Sometimes things need to be clearly stated. The riots across the UK this time last year sparked by bad actors following the murders of the three little girls in Southport gave Jack the idea for ‘Source’. Wider than that, the disenfranchisement of some sectors of society, typically those left behind with needs not met and unconsidered were on his mind. The way they are regarded by the more privileged and indeed the outside. Geographical communities fractured and damaged in a myriad of ways. The level of racism and hate we all saw on our tv screens during the rioting was abhorrent of course it was, but any coverage failed to mention racism is not an exclusive trait of the working classes. It is very present throughout society, some have more subtle invisible ways of expressing it.
There was a sense of inevitability he feels, after the girls were killed. The stage had been set for a while. The people had been set up. ‘The right is in this country, you knew that they were going to jump on that and prey on a lot of working-class communities so fucking disenfranchised and pissed off with the way that their lives have gone over the last couple of decades or longer, since the 80s or since the 70s.’
‘I am middle class, I’m not ducking that one, but I only really turned out the way I did or have the politics or the kind of outlook on life I do because I got into music and met people who were also into other artists who were generally very progressive. My political outlook was informed by that. I could quite easily have gone a different way. If you tell people “your life is difficult because of these other people”, what do you expect is going to happen?’
The Heat Warps celebrates optimisms along with tensions. Take motorik insistence ‘Pharoah’ the first song out of the gate from Heat Warps. A wariness of false gods and having your own philosophy sounds a fine idea and balance from where we’re sitting, inspired in part by Andrew Weatherall’s ‘Fail we may, sail we must’ motto, the ethos inked onto the late musician, DJ and polymath’s body and work. Weatherall played Modern Nature on his radio show and with that in mind Jack wanted to make a record Weatherall might have enjoyed with to his friends late at night. Determination in a sometimes bleak, world. A shared experience. And a sense of stubbornness?
‘it’s true in that, you have no alternative. You have to keep going. Well, you do have an alternative…’
Modern Nature on The Heat Warps have shifted but stay faithful to what pulls us to these albums. A balance of acknowledging life’s anxieties along with the good stuff.
‘I think part of the thing making art is for, and what people gravitate towards art is for, is just because your consciousness and inner life is so abstract and complicated, music and different art connects. It can explain things in a way that you can’t verbally, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we like making things. It helps us, but it also attracts like-minded people. So it’s like a communication and I think that you’re right, anxiety and optimism is what most people experience. I know that’s simplifying it, but it’s the way that you are constantly teetering on one or the other and I think that that’s what most artists are trying to do, isn’t it?’
The Heat Warps is released via Bella Union on 29 August.
UK tour dates:
Saturday 27 September – Blackpool – Bootleg Social
Monday 29 September – Glasgow – The Old Hairdressers
Wednesday 1 October – Sunderland – Pop Recs
Thursday 2 October – Liverpool – Rough Trade
Friday 3 October – Sheffield – Sidney & Matilda
Saturday 4 October – Norwich – The Holloway
Sunday 5 October – Coventry – Just Dropped In Records
Monday 6 October – London – St Matthias Church
Wednesday 8 October – Brighton – Alphabet
Thursday 9 October – Ipswich – Smokehouse
Friday 10 October – Wendover – British Legion
Photo credit: Michael Stasiak
