Modern Nature arrived out of the ashes of Ultimate Painting, with Jack Cooper’s debut album with the project landing just a year and a half after his prior outfit’s final record was set to drop. Featuring a revolving cast of collaborators, Modern Nature has remained fairly prolific since 2019’s How to Live LP, with their third full-length and fifth release altogether, No Fixed Point in Space, being released this past September via Cooper’s longtime label home of Bella Union.
It’s from this collection of songs that Cooper pulled for his “Neighborhoods” set filmed in a tranquil garden in Cambridge. Strumming through his epic seven-and-a-half minute album opener “Tonic,” the songwriter maintains a patient and near-improvisational approach to the tune, at one point seemingly pausing as an airplane flies overhead. As the recording progresses, it becomes clear that Cooper is leaning into the sounds of his natural (and not-so-natural) surroundings to express how these surroundings may have influenced No Fixed Point in Space.
“Birds sing for many reasons and I think humans assume it’s mainly to communicate,” the songwriter shares. “But another reason is that they enjoy it. It produces opioids in their brains. I wrote a lot of the songs from this record in my garden, often in the evening listening to the birds. I recorded this video in the day, so the music is accompanied by the occasional plane and traffic from the main road. It’s all part of it, though.”
Check out the performance below.
