Modern Nature :: The Heat Warps
Photo: Michael Stasiak
There has always been this eager element of environmental energy and natural world ecstasy across the Cambridge, UK-based group Modern Nature's music since their pre-Pandemic debut, “Nature EP.” Still, something shifted both sonically and spiritually within the group with their most recent effort, “The Heat Warps.” This poetic phenomenon separates illusion from illustrated intimacy in many artists these days, without turning too blue in the face and provoking that personal pulse to the heart to explode into a million tiny little prehistoric pieces in response to the times we’ve all endured this last decade, Modern Nature has bravely built a new body of work that is sonically swift, and sobering in its sophisticated approach to the art of music making. A harmonious homage to the human experience, members Jim Wallis, Jeff Tobias, Tara Cunningham, and their lyrical leader, Jack Cooper, have driven a voluminous vehicle over the last half-decade or so, now that the trepidation tides have shifted, and our society faces even more obstacles towards universal oblivion.
“Every day, we’re confronted with a confusing and scary world. Making music and creating things can feel flippant or unnecessary, but my own world view was defined and influenced by art and artists who weren’t afraid to highlight and offer solutions: Public Enemy, The Smiths, or a wider American counterculture.”
Breaking sunsets with climactic chords and freedom-based compositions, Cooper and company seal the dynamical deal by establishing a critical connection within the deranged darkness, and its sudden shadows of unparalleled unity, and quickly suffocate the grim grip that holds us down by inviting a cosmic calmness for all to gravitate towards. Instead of escaping that sinking feeling of despair, Cooper has leaned into the melodic macabre of memory and harmoniously harvested something unique in all its candlelit legitimacy. “The Heat Warps” is a captivating collection of insightful songs rich in secrecy and the tough tenderness that comes with personal perspectives gained from the battlefields of a breaking dawn. Breathing a more hypnotic hush into the visceral void, the band breaks the ultimate silence from the planetary purgatory that has unfortunately settled in and calls on the civil colors of a more collaged consciousness to cater to the numbing nights of an earthly existence.
Photo: Tsouni Cooper
Where Cooper leaves off with 2022, and 2023’s “Island Of Noise,” and “No Fixed Point In Space,” the band continues to carry that pivotal persistence that sets in with tracks like “Zoology", “Glance,” “Totality,” and the album’s epic opener, and first single “Pharaoh.” With a foundational flare caught between a fever dream and the rareness of reality, Modern Nature courageously charges through the society’s severed system, and summons to the surface a brilliantly blooming backdrop to a new world filled with people of peace and places of positive perimeters. Set for release on London/Brighton/NYC-based label Bella Union, in late August, “The Heat Warps” wraps up the outstanding debt of the soul by paying forward something tangible and riddled with strength for all to tap into when they’re at their most vulnerable. “The day of the eclipse, I was driving through New Mexico, and we stopped by the side of the road with hundreds of other people gazing up at the heavens. It felt exciting to be part of something that resonated with people on such a profound level. It’s a fitting album closer and somewhere in there is a philosophy; a romantic nihilism,” says Cooper about last year’s solar eclipse, and with this epic event, which is one of many, bringing folks from all walks of life together in some biblical bridging of the minds, there might be hope for us after all.
