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MODERN STUDIES

Modern Studies

We Are There

    Through the hazy daze of a smoky folk opus, Modern Studies craft rich soundtracks, stuttering Super-8 sketches from a washed-out world of melancholy, hand-tinted and tantalising. Lullaby couplets blossom into gorgeous chamber pop melodies, the drama unfolding behind Emily Scott’s plaintive vocal; part Julie London, part Sandy Denny, a little bit Kate Bush, with a hushed sigh of Joni.

    Sweeping strings carry them into unchartered terrain on their new album ‘We Are Here’, flying high above their psych-folk roots, it’s an epic journey that’s exquisitely delivered, transcending categories, nodding to Brubeck, Low, Talk Talk, Jim O’Rourke and Pentangle, making music that is ready to cross over in these modern times with songs of substance.

    TRACK LISTING

    Side A
    A1 Sink Into
    A2 Light A Fire
    A3 Comfort Me
    A4 Two Swimmers
    A5 Wild Ocean
    Side B
    B1 Open Face
    B2 Won't Be Long
    B3 Mothlight
    B4 Do You Wanna
    B5 Winter Springs

    Modern Studies

    Life Flows In Endless Song / The Body Is A Tide (Double EP) - Love Record Stores 2021 Edition

      Love Record Stores Edition available instore from 10am on Saturday September 4th, any remaining copies will be available on online from 9pm on the same day.
      Limited to one per person.

      ‘Life Flows In Endless Song / The Body Is A Tide’ EP is released on vinyl for this year’s Love Record Stores on 4th September 2021.
      Following the release of ‘The Weight Of The Sun’ LP, Modern Studies shift from light to dark over two new EPs brought together as six track 12-inch ‘Life Flows In Endless Song / The Body Is A Tide’, a record that further cements their reputation for innovative craftsmanship. ‘Life Flows In Endless Song’ showcases the band’s increasingly expansive sound, swelling with orchestrated drama behind the rich vocal pairing of Emily Scott and Rob St John, before their otherworldly dreaminess is pin-pricked at its height by Emily’s beautiful alto on ‘The Failing Light’. ‘The Body Is A Tide’ hails from ominous darker terrains, scratching further into their own psyche; it’s heady and baroque, ornate and super-detailed, an opus that climaxes with ‘High Hymn Summers’ and its slowly-rolling drone, created by processing all the songs from ‘The Weight of the Sun’ played at once. "The EP nods at the idea of our collective bodies weathering rough times, played out with massed strings, prepared guitars, slow bass grooves, hypnotic drums, wobbling saw, xaphoon and mellotron. We shook off our usual song structures in favour of something repetitive, slow and heavy; life flows in endless song." 

      Modern Studies

      The Weight Of The Sun

        New album from kosmiche folk-rock quartet Modern Studies. A glorious compendium of haunted disco hallelujahs, mercurial krautrock chorales, cosmic pop adagios and euphoric, resilient, anthems. ‘The Weight of the Sun’ sees principal songwriters Emily Scott and Rob St John further their warm, esoteric field studies with Pete Harvey and Joe Smillie, as previously reconnoitred on ‘Swell To Great’ (2016) and ‘Welcome Strangers’ (2018).

        “The exact point where Fairport Convention meet Jim O’Rourke at a remote Scottish railway station.” Tim Burgess.

        “Melancholic magic… recalls Johnny Marr’s hazier reveries and the febrile, electrified folk of Polly Harvey’s Let England Shake.” UNCUT

        There is a strange familiarity, and a welcome strangeness, in the quiet alchemy of Modern Studies.

        TRACK LISTING

        Side A
        1. Photograph
        2. Run For Cover
        3. Heavy Water
        4. She
        5. Corridors
        6. Signs Of Use

        Side B
        7. Brother
        8. The Blue Of Distance
        9. Back To The City
        10. Jacqueline
        11. Spaces
        12. Shape Of Light

        Modern Studies And Tommy Perman

        Emergent Slow Arcs

          Modern Studies’ much praised ‘Welcome Strangers’ album from 2018 re-imagined by designer / musician Tommy Perman. “A heady compendium of haunted disco lullabies for foggy urban woodland raves and psychotropic campfire sing-alongs,” said The Quietus of the original Perman (Random Audio Therapy Unit, Cybraphon) re-invents it as a series of modern electronic compositions, like Brian Eno, John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream’s offspring hanging out with Aphex Twin’s twin. “My solo work follows an analytical documentary style and much of it has taken the urban environment as inspiration.” On their previous work together as Water Of Life, The Vinyl Factory claimed Perman and Rob St John’s music as "a fascinating and ambitious project that tests the boundaries of what we perceive as music in the environments we live in". A Frankenstein moment? A monster of ambient ardour, ‘Emergent Slow Arcs’ is something else. An electronic homage, a mystical re-telling that sounds so askew from the sum of its parts it has a life all of its own, traversing an arc previously unchartered. 

          TRACK LISTING

          A1 Ephemeris Mist
          A2 Faraway Hills
          A3 Celestial Dance
          A4 Moonshot

          B1 Ghost Skies
          B2 Spectral Cannon
          B3 Edgeland Duet
          B4 Sunup Shutdown


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