My Review: Atmos Bloom - Flora

London, the capital of effervescence and fluorescence, gives birth to creatures only to see them often take the path of relocation: it cannot always hold souls eager for curiosity towards different situations and so, like a structure that smacks of escape to victory, some of them migrate to rediscover themselves, releasing their talent and serenity in new places.

This also happened to Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson, a couple in their daily and artistic lives, who moved to the English music city par excellence: Manchester.

And of this magical place they have absorbed many things: from enthusiasm, to study, to a precise technical approach, to the freedom of experimentation, concluding the whole lot in the joy of songs that allow the expression of their talent in the knowledge that the awareness of being able to grow further surpasses the quality of an already excellent result. A remarkable debut album that, in the duo's intentions, did not want to commit the listener too much in terms of length: seven sonic bows for little more than twenty-seven minutes, but the quality of the tracks written does not diminish what for many could be considered a mini LP.

Active for two years, they have managed to turn the difficulty of lockdown into a possible creative wave: where there is constraint, there can be elements of beauty, meaning and validity that allow, through the delicacy of their approach, to generate soft petals and intense dreamlike atmospheres that stimulate smiles, dances and intense joy. 

In their world, fairies and gnomes inhabit time within melodies filled with sensuality and playful activities as a flight of songs that mix consciousness and skill, giving the listener the intimate conviction that this couple knows how to write jewels of light.

Guitars and keyboards that smell of poetry and freshness, combined with the delightfully captivating vocals, are the main elements that give Flora (a magnificent title that well explains what moves within this album), all the freedom to enchant our listening. Which quickly conveys us drawings like splashes of blue in the sky of our breaths, taking us with generous capacity, in the circuit of memory, into the structures that were once approached by Mazzy Star, by The Durutti Column, slowly sensing some sound buildings of Cocteau Twins, and throwing us, with enchantment, to observe some of the magic of DIIV. However, you will not find plagiarism but inspiration, legalised thievery leading to self-knowledge. Starting from there, the two have built their identity in order to be able to insert elements of their own, which in the end are what make us claim to have found something new and extremely valid.

Delicacy and youthfulness seem to prove that there is still the possibility of being contaminated, of creating remarkable beams of admiration and of finding in our listening friends with whom to spend time, freeing oneself fully from the many negativities of existence: Flora is a precious gift, a clean river, a flight through the pure air, a daytime cuddle to reach the night feeling light and full of enthusiasm.

In terms of musical genres, we are faced with the perfectly balanced dosage of dreampop and shoegaze, pop tweets and slightest hints of unconscious, minimalist post-punk. One breathes the conviction that the work of creation is perfectly balanced and that each one has places of expertise that inspire the other to make the musical tracks grow and perfect, leading them to become fixed forever within the beauty which  affects them so much that they become capable of enduring: we will love this debut long afterwards too.

With extreme conviction, I say that at last we are listening to an album that disinfects, cleanses and makes the macrocosm of our existences shining, restoring to us the right to see the present and the future as a place of access to serenity.

And we feel loved, respected, freed from music that is too often filled with pain and trembling: Tilda and Curtis are angels who, like surgeons, are able to oust negativity to lead us to feel light and dedicated to optimism, like missionaries who know what true love is, to give others the chance to see existence as a balanced and seductive path.

So welcome the moment when we enter these seven petals to better smell intense and soft flagrances...

Song by Song 

When We Met

The album begins with a longing for a return to the past, to the magical demonstration of the value of an encounter. All this is portrayed with a delicate and lucid atmosphere, between guitars and keyboards that alternate and find a way to create a great twinning. And it is a desire that enters into the ethereal dimension of a dream which dances within Curtis's sonic brushstrokes and Tilda's 19th-century fairy voice, to establish from the outset the effervescent propensity for petal-covered sound carpets. Vini Really and Robert Smith shake hands, smugly, with those who could be grandchildren kissed by generous talent.

Daisy

Once upon a time there was The Sundays, a war machine of flowing, captivating dreams. In Daisy, the Mancunian duo takes the positive side of pop, injecting some of those Bristol band cells into their own treasure chest of oxygen-filled vocal textures and guitars that float from grey Manchester to the blue skies of beautiful enchantments. Dripping, joyful, the song shows how beauty can be architected and deposited within the notes.

Something Other Than You

Already the title intrigues and says a lot: it is a hopeful departure. Here we find the poetry of Slowdive combined with the ability of the couple to oscillate between the 90s and the present day, to allow the melodies to find the centre of gravity where they can deposit enchantment and poetry. And it is the soft side of shoegaze which creates delicate fragrances, rose petals and cotton balls that embrace each other beautifully. All their potential finds a way of being real in the most evocative track on the album, something special that it is better not to define, because that would be like chaining dreams…

Picnic In The Rain

Curtis and Tilda build a colourful castle in the sky, between Manchester's Victorian palaces and its modern buildings, with the ability to precisely fix swirls of sinuous beauty, allowing the rhythm to pull us into a dance where we are blindfolded but free to dream. We find ourselves within the paths of guitars devoted to fascination and dreampop that becomes the Master of smiles like diamonds destined to eternity. The bass, with a post-punk matrix, gives impetus to luminescent guitars and the voice seems to sketch in the clouds drawings of a little girl who finds her escape in the sky.

Time

The rhythm slows down here, the guitar creates a sensational loop, the bass is its guardian for a magical, sensual groove and the voice a goddess walking through time to show its unquestionable inclination to make sweetness eternal. 

As a wandering star which floats in the blue, this feather does the same thing: the two are magicians who give notes the role of being unavoidable enchantments.

Almost Natural

The whole stratosphere descends on Manchester to whisper the two of them to breathe its intensity: it happens that the voice wisely kept further away can be perfectly aligned with the notes that seem to come from the delicate fingertips of Vini Reilly, and hints of the avalanche of suggestions from Sarah Records, above all Blueboy, can be noted. Of the band from Reading one hears its penchant for matching twisted but light guitars with the big bass. The two, however, find a way to be original, and it is Tilda's splendid singing that shows that the band is not at all subjugated by the power of the past. One dreams to stop the nightmares with this splendid creature.

Morning Sun

And it is with a resounding attitude to amaze that the Mancunian band decides to end their debut album: Morning Sun compacts the bass and guitar within a sound that is both solid and light at the same time, with vocals that seem to whisper the need for a counter melody which proves to be magical and essential. The guitars sound like a continuous rapture and one has the distinct feeling that this was a studied track, but that it has found its gravitational space to be an embrace, a temporary farewell, because I have no doubt that we will hear more gems from this artistic couple kissed by skills and self-styled propensities to fix all their sweetness on the notes…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

28th August 2022

https://atmosbloom.bandcamp.com/album/flora

https://open.spotify.com/album/5MOsdLQs3Rx5ed7cnrH5Ku?si=G3kKk4oOR0CYQu4EUlY_qw