Review: Modern Nature – How To Live

Modern Nature - How To Live

It isn’t often that I hear an album that feels tailor-made for me. Modern Nature’s debut album, How To Live might be it. Bounding off the tails of the twelve-minute epic “Supernature” from the supergroup’s debut EP, Nature, vocalist Jack Cooper (ex-Ultimate Painting), keyboardist Will Young (BEAK>) and drummer Aaron Neveu (Woods) climb to great heights, enhancing their already entrancing compositions with the induction of cellist Rupert Gillett and saxophonist Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers). It’s Young’s work with BEAK> and Portishead instrumentalist, Geoff Barrow that stunningly complements Cooper’s vision for Modern Nature, blossoming into an astonishing slow-burning tension. In How To Live, the rural and the urban unite; isolation is in decline and endless beauty surfaces.

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Blink-182 Apparently to Feature on Posthumous XXXTentacion Album

Blink-182

According to Sounds Music Group CEO, Solomon Sobande, Blink-182, Lil Wayne, Lil Nas X, and many more will be featured on the posthumous release from XXXTentacion:

There’s a healthy amount. Tory Lanez and Mavado; there’s a country song featuring Lil Nas X. One of the most surprising is Blink-182 — one of Jah’s favorite bands.

I’m not sure if this is a Travis Barker feature, or if the entire band is on a track, but to say this is disappointing to see would be an understatement.

The Adults in the Room

Megan Greenwell, writing at Deadspin:

The unstated, fuller version seems to be that he believed he could simply turn up the traffic (and thus turn a profit), as if adjusting a faucet, not by investing in quality journalism but by tricking people into clicking on more pages. While pageviews are no longer seen as a key performance indicator at most digital publications—time spent on the site is increasingly thought to be a more valuable metric—Spanfeller has focused on pageviews above all else. In his first meeting with editorial leaders, he said he expected us to double pageviews. Several weeks later, without acknowledging a change, he mentioned that the expectation is in fact to quadruple them. Four months in, the vision for getting there seems less clear than ever.

I think this article will resonate with anyone that’s ever worked for a large media company at one point or another.

How Artist Imposters and Fake Songs Sneak Onto Streaming Services

Pitchfork

Noah Yoo, writing at Pitchfork:

Suspicious bootlegs and fraudulent uploads are nothing new in digital music, but the problem has infiltrated paid streaming services in unexpected and troubling ways. Artists face the possibility of impersonators uploading fake music to their official profiles, stolen music being uploaded under false monikers, and of course, simple human error resulting in botched uploads. Meanwhile, keen fans have figured out where they can find illegally uploaded, purposefully mistitled songs in user playlists. […]

However, it’s easy for leakers to simply lie and upload infringing music, which may or may not be caught by the distributors’ fraud prevention methods. By abusing the limited oversight in the digital supply chain, it’s possible that leakers can make significant amounts of money off music they have zero rights to.