When Modern Nature toured their last album, 2023’s No Fixed Point In Space , it became apparent to Jack Cooper – the band’s main creative force –

that they were already pulling away from the free, open

ended approach they had spent five years working towards; almost as if the music had become so abstract and elasticated, it now had to snap back towards something more structured. As they found themselves naturally locking into more fixed grooves, he realised a new direction had been set. Their new album – The Heat Warps – is the triumphant manifestation of where that new direction took them. In the aftermath, Cooper’s songwriting, which had become increasingly impressionistic, found a new focus and the idea of making an album that followed a similar pat h to the last two increasingly seemed obtuse. The purpose was to forge a radical change. The core trio of him, Jim Wallis (drums) and Jeff Tobias (bass guitar) were augmented by a new guitarist – Tara Cunningham. Modern Nature’s recent records have refle cted an insular life. Cooper had moved out to the countryside in 2021 and had, in his words, been “hibernating” while he started a family. He felt this new band was a symbol for his reawakening and the perfect vessel for him to continue to explore themes t hat he’s sung about with Modern Nature – collectivism, our relationship with the natural world, the weight of consciousness – but with more directness and purpose. The key was the new dual guitar sound. “I’ve always been drawn to bands where two guitarist s work as a unit to move around and colour the rhythm section,” explains Cooper. “I’d been listening to the demos Television did with Brian Eno in the day and then that night I played with Tara for the first time at an improvised music show. We have a very similar approach to the guitar and that extends to the way we sing, so it gives the music an interesting balance. “What we do is mirrored; a symmetry on either side of what Jim and Jeff are doing in the rhythm section. We’ve played with lots of amazing m usicians who continue to orbit around what we do, but Tara joining the band felt like finding the other side to the square. Previous records have been performed by upwards of fifteen people but it was apparent the four of us could achieve something more po werful and more direct.” In the time Modern Nature has been a band, the world has undoubtedly changed. The words Cooper had been writing previously were somewhat ambiguous but it had started to feel like he was sitting on the fence and that was something he needed to address. “Every day we’re confronted with a confusing and scary world,” he says. “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 hig hlight and offer solutions: Public Enemy, The Smiths or a wider American counterculture.” “The community we’ve built our life around – artists, musicians and the people who gravitate to these things as way of communicating – are struggling to reconcile ho w they fit into an increasingly cruel world. This album, the themes and the lyrics are directed towards them because I think there are still reasons to be optimistic. There are amazing things happening all around us and it’s up to communities like ours to double down on the things we believe in. It feels as if being part of a group like Modern Nature and making an album that’s open, optimistic and ambitious is in itself part of the solution.” As the new band started to play together more, the energy, excit ement and telepathy between them gained momentum and it became clear they needed to make a record that captured that. They locked into a process

where they booked a couple of shows, directly followed by four days in the studio (the all

analogue Gizzard Rec ording in east London). They’d spend two weeks living in each other’s pockets – a very condensed rush of creativity. “It’s rare to hear a recording of a band playing in a room together,” adds Cooper. “And that interaction, the discrepancies in timing, syn ergy, in pitch, that’s where the magic really is, I think, and that’s what we wanted to capture.”