Bloomfield Machine is the work of multi-instrumentalist Brian Kassan, a determinedly DIY project that’s now spent nine albums poking around the murkier corners of the subconscious. “Algorithm & Blues” is that ninth record, arriving August 28th, and the title isn’t just wordplay. Kassan has been direct about what he means by it: so much of ordinary life now runs on algorithms nobody chose, and a lot of people are carrying a low-grade sadness about where that’s all heading.
Algorithm & Blues
The record runs fifteen tracks in roughly thirty minutes, which tells you something about how Kassan builds these things. He keeps songs deliberately short, mostly two to three minutes, and he’s said that’s as much about keeping himself engaged while writing as it is about the listener. The upshot is an album you can take in one sitting without it feeling slight, because there’s a lot packed into each of those small windows. He’s recommended headphones specifically, and that’s sound advice here, a fair amount of what he does involves textures you don’t typically hear in electronic music, and they’re easy to miss on speakers.
The title track lands third in the running order and carries most of the record’s emotional weight. Electric guitar does the melodic heavy lifting, and the percussion leans further toward rock than you’d expect going in. What the song keeps circling is impermanence, the low hum of anxiety that comes from everything changing faster than anyone can process. Nothing lasts, which is obvious enough as a statement, but sitting inside that fact for three minutes is a different experience than acknowledging it.
There’s a memory thread running through it too, a flash of kids out playing, caught up in some invented game nobody outside the yard would ever be able to follow. Kassan seems less interested in where a memory physically lives, in someone’s head or on a hard drive somewhere, than in the fact that it barely matters anymore. Both versions fade at roughly the same rate, and both still catch you off guard with the same ache when something calls them back up.
The rest of the album stays in that territory, machines that feel like they have interior lives, people wrestling with dread, and something eventually resembling acceptance rather than despair. Ahead of release, Kassan is hosting a listening party on Bandcamp on August 26th where the full record will be playable and he’ll be around to talk about it.
Final Thoughts
“Algorithm & Blues” is the sound of an artist nine records deep and still finding new corners to explore, and it’s worth the thirty minutes it asks for.
You can preorder by clicking here and also take a look at his Bandcamp prerelease party here.
You can find Bloomfield Machine on Bandcamp, on Spotify, on Facebook, on YouTube, and on Apple Music. Stay tuned to MusicOnTheRox.com for all your music news and reviews.
