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BloomPosted in Music on 06 Oct 2008 |
 Reviewed by Steve Litchfield |
  (11 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)  Loading ... |
Editor’s rating:  
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A novelty or a musical instrument? An inspiration or something to send you to sleep? The uncertainties abound in Bloom, partly created by Brian Eno, legendary pop and prog musician and producer and someone
who’s apparently always been interested in ‘generative music’, i.e. music created by intelligent software rather than by human talent.
Which isn’t to say that the result sounds like the robotic music of Kraftwerk, the results of Bloom often veer between Pink Floyd and a novelty musical fountain. There’s a ‘Listen’ mode and a ‘Create’ mode, so that you can either use it for pure listening/relaxation or to try your hand at a Tangerine Dream-like ambient masterpiece.
At its heart, Bloom comprises a set of music ‘pads’ – no, not the sort you hit, but long synthesiser chords that sweep in and out, allied with tinkly, reverb-drenched single notes that sit in the same key, in various registers, and provide a primeval melody to sit on top of the pads.
The genius of the system is partly in the way that you generate the notes according to where you tap on the touch screen, with higher taps creating higher notes, and partly in the way that the note patterns are repeated for a while, so that you can effectively play along with yourself. The echoes do gradually fade away, so you need to create new patterns of notes, creating a gradually evolving aural landscape.
On-screen, each tap is accompanied by a visual ripple, adding to the ambient effect.
Even more cleverly, if you stop tapping for any reason, Bloom remembers some of your previous patterns and gradually introduces them in various combinations, creating even more new music. Furthermore, you can customise how the application behaves, right down to setting the delay between pattern repeats, to freezing the current pattern (perhaps you’re a musician and it has inspired a melody that you want to get written down?) and even down to ’shaking’ the iPhone to clear a pattern.
Brian Eno’s creations have always inspired others and Bloom looks set to follow suit. It’s an amazing application that you have to try in order to appreciate.
It’s just a shame that, due to the current iPhone restrictions on third party applications, Bloom can’t run in the background, it would (in Listen mode) have made an ideal ‘block the world out’ soundtrack while attending to more important matters elsewhere on your iPhone.
Still, there’s always your Tangerine Dream collection in the iPod app….
