NEW MUSIC | TORONTO-BASED ALTERNATIVE HIP-HOP TRIO BLOOM ANNOUNCE DEBUT SINGLE “NO GOOD THOUGHTS”

After com­ing togeth­er as a trio in Novem­ber 2018, bloom has spent the past year fer­vently writ­ing and record­ing. Ini­tially plan­ning to release an EP, the group’s chem­istry allowed them to amass a large num­ber of demos in a short amount of time. They soon linked up with esteemed Toronto engin­eer Domin­ic “Dot” Okune and col­lect­ively decided to release these tracks as an album.

 The mov­ing and enig­mat­ic “no good thoughts” is bloom’s first offer­ing from this upcom­ing pro­ject, sched­uled for release in Janu­ary 2019.

 Tak­ing inspir­a­tion from a wide vari­ety of artists includ­ing Juice WRLD, Post Malone and The Weeknd, the mem­bers of bloom — Jack­son Court­nall, Noah Lev­ine, and Chris­toph­er Gian­nar­is — cre­ate music that blurs the lines between hip-hop, RnB, emo and indie. The group fuse their indi­vidu­al back­grounds to forge a sound that’s more than the sum of its parts, with Jack­son hand­ling the bulk of pro­duc­tion, Noah provid­ing lyr­ics and vocals, and Chris bring­ing unique gui­tar con­tri­bu­tions that draw from a 90s grunge influ­ence. The res­ult is a boldly vul­ner­able sound that is fresh and excit­ing but suf­fused with poignance and emotion.

“In Decem­ber 2018, I met Noah and Chris. Noah would text me every day ask­ing to pro­duce and even­tu­ally one day the three of us hung out and messed around. Around Janu­ary 2019, Chris, Noah and I began mess­ing around with vocals and after mak­ing “done now,” I had a feel­ing that music was going to be a huge part of my life for a long time.” – Jack­son Courtnall

“no good thoughts” begins with a bit­ter­sweet gui­tar line which forms the melod­ic and rhythmic back­bone of the entire track. As the gui­tar plays a dis­tant and dis­em­bod­ied sample of female speech, hid­den behind a wall of vocal effects and dis­tor­tion, trap claps and hi-hats flut­ter into the son­ic field before a weighty 808 swells to com­plete the per­cuss­ive frame­work. Over this bold instru­ment­al, bloom’s reflect­ive lyr­ic­al con­tent focuses on the neg­at­ive thoughts that can creep in and slowly take hold of your mind.

“It’s about the con­stant struggle between thoughts that may be pos­it­ive, neg­at­ive, harm­ful, and self-depre­ci­at­ive. This struggle is due to past exper­i­ences (i.e. past rela­tion­ships, friend­ships, trau­mat­ic events) and res­ults in a crip­pling depres­sion. As a res­ult, in order to cope, rela­tion­ships are torn, friend­ship circles begin to shrink and beha­viour becomes reck­less. It then becomes about self-real­iz­a­tion and try­ing to change, with the goal of becom­ing better.”

As “no good thoughts” pro­gresses, the mem­bers of bloom trade vocals back and forth. Hip-hop influ­ence is markedly evid­ent in their flows, but their lush vocal har­mon­ies clearly dis­play the pop and RnB sens­ib­il­it­ies that per­meate their entire sound. Once the chor­us hits, the drums drop away, leav­ing only the gui­tar as a back­drop, as lay­ers of stacked vocal har­mon­ies sing in uni­son: “I nev­er ran away/You just thought that I would nev­er leave”.

“no good thoughts” is sched­uled for inde­pend­ent release Janu­ary 3rd 2020.

 

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

About Rishma

Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless.