No Fixed Point In Space, the third full-length album by Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature, takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on 2021’s Island Of Noise and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It’s a music that hasn’t been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world.
“With this record,” Cooper explains, “I wanted the music to reflect nature: beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, process and chance. I wanted the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown.”
“The way you see or hear music in your head is abstract and magic… far more beautiful than what eventually appears on tape. When you sit down with an instrument and begin translating an idea, it quickly conforms. I’ve tried to develop this music without thinking in terms of set rhythms, time signatures, folk or pop structures, syntax; the devices you associate with the music world which I come from. I wanted to make music that was abstract, free and honest, whilst still being predominantly tonal and recognisably song based. New music! It feels like time to make something that no one has heard before.”
The swing of one particular human present on No Fixed Point In Space is especially noteworthy. The legendary Julie Tippetts (Driscoll) adds her distinctive voice to the record, on what is her first appearance on a recording for several years. Tippetts’ ability to evoke a landscape, whether physical or interior, has always been a feature of her vocal performances. Throughout this record her voice does the same to great, purposeful effect, not least on the closing track Ensō, where she takes the lead.
“Ultimately,” concludes Cooper. “This is music I’ve always wanted to hear. I read a quote of Einstein’s via Merge Cunningham that said there are “no fixed points in space” and that felt right. It felt like what I was trying to achieve here.”