We Are There FIRE
8/10
PERHAPS it is the awareness, inescapable of late, that life is both precious and fragile, but the fourth album by Modern Studies exhibits a toughening of sinew, a quickening of intent. The sense of urgency marks a small but significant evolution from their last record, The Weight Of The Sun, released in early summer 2020.
Since forming in 2015, the music created by this collaborative quartet has tended towards shiver, shimmer and murmur. Modern Studies blend into an unclassifiable whole elements of hazy, pastoral psych-folk and the slips and sighs of analogue electronica, alongside pickings from krautrock, Brubeckian jazz, blissed-out Cali canyon harmonies and the sweet tang of chamber pop.
Instruments seemingly named after decommissioned weaponry or tools of torture (sub 37, ms10, clock gong,…