New dimensions
The third album from Jack Cooper’s fluid alias aims to make “something that no one has heard before.”
By David Sheppard.
The daisy age: Modern Nature’s Jack Cooper strives for authentic existential expression.
Modern Nature
★★★★
No Fixed Point In Space
BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP
PARTLY A REACTION to the grid-like predictability of contemporar y digital recording, No Fixed Point In Space, true to its Einstein (via Merce Cunningham)-derived title, is predicated on the eschewing of strict rhythms, time signatures, traditional song structures and even syntactically orthodox lyrics. In their place, Blackpoolborn, Cambridgeshire-based Cooper, alongside some estimable confrères, has sought to maximise the textural and dimensional possibilities of part-scored, part-spontaneous ensemble playing alloyed to spare, allusive vocals – an approach influenced by contemplation of the natural world. “I wanted the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown,” he says in the accompanying notes.