Interview // Modern Nature
We spoke with Jack Cooper of Modern Nature about the group’s newest record Annual, the experimental collaborative project Cycles, and how the London-based artist is reacting to the current state of the world and creative industry.
Annual is your second full length record with your newest band or musical organism, Modern Nature. Can you explain a bit about how the band functions as far as recording and touring goes and how the cast morphs for the project?
I suppose there's some debate over whether it's a full length or not right? It was suggested that after the album we should do an EP to keep things moving along but I'm not really a huge fan of the EP as a vessel for work with any kind of longevity.
We made the Nature EP last year that was meant to be an introduction to the group but yeah; I had this idea in the works for a record that was taken from a journal I kept for 2019. To me it's just a record and I think it stands up to the How To Live album as a cohesive idea but it's being sold as a 'mini-album'. The intention was for Modern Nature always to be a constant evolution; musicians would come and go and the band would morph along the way depending on who's involved. Jeff Tobias is important to both the Nature EP and How To Live but his role became a lot more integral when it became a live entity and we started improvising. The same can be said for Jim Wallis who stepped in when it became apparent Aaron Neveu wouldn't be able to devote much time to the group. Jim is a very thoughtful, composed human/drummer and suits the way we wanted the music to move. Will Young was obviously my main collaborator on How To Live but him stepping to the side has opened up other doors and the lack of structured organ/synth parts has freed us up timing-wise.
You're based in London and do most of your recording for Modern Nature there. As we're speaking, at least where New Commute is based in North Carolina, restaurants and stores are in the early stages of phasing back open and figuring out ways to go about business in socially distant, health-conscious operations. Still, music venues remain closed with shows and tours mostly being cancelled or continuously postponed. How has the pandemic impacted your work, your touring plans, your creative headspace?
I don't see much point in speculating how it'll affect touring plans or the music industry and if I've personally indulged that kind of thinking, then my outlook has become somewhat bleak to say the least. Honestly, I think artists are a very resilient group of people and I'm sure they will continue to think bigger. Most artists and musicians of any worth don't work to get rich and although I'm sure the road ahead will present even more obstacles, people will continue to make records and put on shows. I'm obviously talking from a position of privilege but I think there's some merit to concentrating on making work rather than thinking about the state of the music industry.
What places in London are you most worried about as we progress through the coming weeks and months? How are the record stores you frequent most often operating?
It's more like which businesses we're not worried about but like I said previously, people who put on shows, record stores, restaurants, musicians. It's never been easy.
In the early days of quarantine, you initiated the Cycles project where you asked musicians from all over the world to collaborate for a very unique listening experience. Can you explain how it worked, some of the people who were involved, and what the ideal listening instructions were?
We'd just got home from a tour in Europe that had combusted, so I think I was probably still clinging onto contact with other musicians. There were a few strands to the idea. One was to record something and for other musicians to add to the music in whatever way they saw fit, albeit with a few prompts and for those pieces to be self sufficient in that each piece could be listened to independently but together they would form this huge collage. It's all in free-time so the contributions exist in their own space. The intention was that you'd download the music onto different devices and then to play different tracks on the devices set up in different parts of your room; it could be as simple as pressing play on your phone and placing it on the window sill and then playing something else on your laptop in the other room. Each listening experience would be different. It's not an original idea, more an extension of other work, but the situation seemed to cast new light on it. And then the third strand was to donate the money to a local food-bank, which we did. In hindsight, I think the whole idea could've been a lot simpler but it's taken on a life of it's own now. I just recorded some guitar basically.
Modern Nature's first US tour was earlier this year playing a run up the east coast and into Canada. What was the tour like playing for an American audience for the first time with the new group? Do you have any emotions about playing just before everything shut down and changed things so drastically?
Well the tour was a shot in the dark because conventional wisdom says that touring the east coast just after Christmas is a bad idea. By and large, the weather held off and people really came out. It was very exciting to see that and to talk to people and hear that the album had resonated. I don't see much difference playing to an American audience per se but the shows were great and really busy. The European tour just after was a different thing altogether... the shows were great but we were really just trying to outrun this virus and it eventually caught us up down in Spain. The Madrid show got cancelled as we were driving down to Spain and by the time we finished in Barcelona that night, the country went into lockdown and the rest of the shows were cancelled. We were playing cards back at our hotel when Donald Trump announced the travel ban and Jeff had to book a flight there and then. It was surreal. He got home but at some point contracted the virus and has been laid up with ever since... he's just getting back to normal.
Annual closely trails last year's Modern Nature debut, the excellent How To Live LP. What is most responsible for the extended creative period for you? Did the new songs come out of a new and insular creative mindset or have you felt Modern Nature's catalog to be an extension of ideas from one album to the next?
I do feel like we're hitting a stride right now and I think that's down to a collection of like-minded musicians and as a result of my contrasting experiences in Ultimate Painting. In one regard, it was very rewarding touring as much as we did and it's generally the group I'm known most for. I'm very proud of the first record and some of the other stuff but I think in hindsight my writing was stunted for a few years. After the first album, I was essentially playing a role and that was trying to write songs like Ultimate Painting. I may as well have been writing jingles for advertising. There's a place for that type of writing and I'm not discounting it if that's how you work, but it didn't do me any good. Lots of people prefer the second and third records but I feel the first album had excitement and spontaneity. I'm sure James would agree.
With Modern Nature, I feel like the idea and tone of the group is very clear in my mind and in the minds of Jim and Jeff. I think having a framework and having limitations and a purpose is very liberating. A defined purpose in particular means that you can approach every new song or live show with the intent of achieving that. An artist can be more expressive on un-lined pages but you have to have the notebook in the first place.
You've described Annual as a pointer to the path ahead. What does the path ahead look like from your current viewpoint as a musician, band leader, and Londoner?
I think this group is capable of making a unique record, so that's what we'll try to do.
Purchase Modern Nature’s new record Annual out now via Bella Union.