Bloom’s Taxonomy Releases Album

“Tumbleweed Tornado,” one of the more transcendent works to be found on the new record Foley Age by Bloom’s Taxonomy, doesn’t present itself with smothering tones and anti-climactic theatrics. Instead, it comes to us shuffling out of the silence on the back of a clandestine cloud of texture, alluding to a connection with omnipotent forces in a reverse vocal track soon to adorn its makeshift melody. In jazz-like fashion, this song slowly but surely finds its center and connects to the grander narrative held within other cuts on Foley Age, such as the title track or the café piece “Pluvius,” but not without making its own unique impression on listeners beforehand.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy wasn’t trying to solidify his present in the ambient community by recycling the same elemental standards of his last record with this latest release. Instead, he’s pushing everything to the limit – the synths, his principle aesthetics, even the capacities of the studio itself – and turning both himself and the work he’s creating over to the sonic gods. The results, in my view, are something every experimental music fan needs to hear sooner than later this year. 

Some of the material in Foley Age, like the post-rock-reminiscent “Cosmic Village of the Jaguars” or the full-ambient “Earthrise,” don’t tell us as much of a story through tone as they do rhythm (or even its absence), and as progressive as this might sound on paper, it’s actually rather cut and dry in practice. Listening to this entire record from start to finish doesn’t leave me with the sense of having just listened to a concept piece – instead, I actually feel like this is the culmination of several fragmented ideas that made more sense in a married format. “Elephant Park” pays menacing homage to the doom and gloom of an apocalyptic noise sound, while “Imaginary Angles” realizes its psychedelic side long before it has the chance to become the trip-hop throwback we never knew we needed in our lives. Even at its most self-aware, such as the song “Locked In,” Foley Age is never asking us to tune-into one central theme or even answering questions about who its creator is post-Bitter Lake so much as it’s posing new queries about both the content and the listeners themselves. It’s provocative and deliberately mind-bending when we’re least expecting it, which is the cornerstone of every iconic modern record in my opinion. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy could have cut a fine two-song sample of this LP in “Obrigada Nada” and “Mount Bromo” and probably seen just as many accolades as he’s going to get for the entire tracklist, but whether you cherry-pick the content or explore the his masterful work from beginning to end uninterrupted, ambient enthusiasts are sure to love what this album brings to the table. Foley Age isn’t the first experimental offering to go places its creator hadn’t visited beforehand, but it’s the first I’ve heard in 2021 to make me genuinely interested in what its sequels might sound like. 

Nicole Killian