Living in the city, it can feel as if the only thing in the air is pollution. For Modern Nature, though, a new group comprising Jack Cooper of alt-rock band Ultimate Painting, Will Young of lo-fi group Beak>, and Aaron Neveu of Woods, there’s a quiet, devotional beauty that sits behind the filth and noise.
Taking their cue from the tender falsetto of English folkman Nick Drake, the free-form rhythms of Alice Coltrane and the rattling guitars of Radiohead, Modern Nature’s debut EP, Nature, is a sprawling journey through an imagined natural landscape.
Each of the four tracks evokes its own environment: the rush of a sunlit morning on the Jonny Greenwood-esque opener Nature; the solitude of dusk on the plaintive Flats; an afternoon softness on Blackwaterside. The group reach their peak in the 12-minute closer Supernature, where saxophonist Jeff Tobias channels Pharoah Sanders, meandering through an interweaving incantatory rhythm to bring forward the optimistic promise of a new dawn.
“Every song we record or musician we gain, another door seems to open on a route that’s worth pursuing,” Cooper says. Modern Nature are carving their own route through the undergrowth, one that opens the listener up to the British folk tradition and a new frontier of organic sound.
• Modern Nature’s debut EP, Nature, is out now on Bella Union
