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Modern Nature at Rough Trade Liverpool

Johnny James, Managing Editor

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Modern Nature

Rough Trade, City Centre
2 October 2025

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

From £15.00
Modern Nature
Modern Nature by James Sharp
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Modern Nature bring their shape-shifting blend of bucolic folk, free jazz and psych-tinged post-rock to Rough Trade Liverpool this October, in support of their forthcoming album The Heat Warps.

Since the end of his band Ultimate Painting in 2018, Blackpool-born Jack Cooper has led Modern Nature through a steady evolution – from open-ended studio collective to a tightly focused quartet. Alongside drummer Jim Wallis, bassist Jeff Tobias and now guitarist-vocalist Tara Cunningham, Cooper has steered the band from the abstract sprawl of No Fixed Point in Space towards something more structured and immediate. That shift defines the band’s current form – and the new material.

The Heat Warps hasn’t landed yet, but two early singles offer a compelling glimpse. ‘Pharaoh’ pairs motoric rhythms with interwoven dual guitars, nodding to Pharoah Sanders in its lyrical theme of resisting inherited authority. ‘Source’, written in the wake of the 2024 UK asylum-seeker riots, reflects on community, alienation and resilience. But despite its political weight, the song retains a strangely uplifting tone, reminiscent in spirit to the Beta Band’s ‘Dry the Rain’ or ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.

But it’s in the live setting that The Heat Warps feels poised to resonate deepest. Where earlier Modern Nature records drifted inwards – exploratory, impressionistic – this one reaches out. The new songs are built less for solitary immersion than for shared experience: music that invites you in and asks you to feel something together. It feels like a meaningful moment to catch the band – more focused, more grounded, and more attuned to the collective pulse than ever before.

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Where to go near Modern Nature at Rough Trade Liverpool

Liverpool
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Odeon Liverpool ONE

Located right in the centre of town, Odeon Liverpool One features a huge 18 screens with all of the latest gizmos from RealD 3D to DBOX.

City Centre
Shopping Centre
Liverpool ONE

Liverpool ONE avoided the fate of so many 1960s and 1970s large-scale shopping developments. Instead of obliterating what was already there, blocks of new-build sit alongside preserved and renovated existing buildings.

Liverpool
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Albert’s Schenke

Albert’s Schenke is the brand new Liverpool bar-restaurant from Mission Mars, the team behind a host of top-class Manchester venues.

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Aether

Dazzling cocktail bar from The Alchemist team, based in Liverpool One. Expect a rotating line-up of street food vendors taking over the kitchen.

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Hanover Street Social

At the intersection of Hanover Street, Duke Street and Liverpool One, Hanover Street Social is at the centre of Liverpool’s burgeoning food quarter

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MerseyMade West Kirby

In the MerseyMade shop you’ll find bottled gin from the likes of Turncoat Gin, Anfield Gin, Albert Dock Gin and Three Graces Gin. Yep, Liverpool REALLY likes its gin.

Mamasan Liverpool
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Mamasan Liverpool

Mamasan is a new three-floor South East Asian inspired restaurant and bar based in Liverpool One. It also has exciting cook-at-home options.

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