Bloom: 10 Worlds

Opal Limited

About this app

Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers are pleased to announce Bloom: 10 Worlds – a developed, augmented and expanded new edition of 2008’s game-changing original Bloom app, which explored uncharted territory in the realm of applications and was dubbed “The First Great iPhone App” by Gizmodo.

Requiring no musical or technical ability, the egalitarian and user-friendly Bloom app enabled anyone of any age to create music, simply by touching the screen. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allowed users to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player took over when Bloom was left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.

Bloom: 10 Worlds is a reimagining of the original – not simply a remaster. If the original Bloom was a single, then this would be an album. The widely broadened palette of sounds and images can be experienced via 10 new ‘worlds’, each exploring a new direction for Bloom. The first world the user encounters is an echo of the original app, with circles appearing where the user taps, while the later worlds each introduce new combinations of sounds, shapes, colours and rules of behaviour.

Please Note: At present an audio issue exclusive to the Google Pixel has prevented us releasing on those devices. We apologise for any disappointment, and hope to resolve the issue in future.

Praise for Bloom: 10 Worlds

"Few apps are truly iconic. Bloom was, and now its story lives on in this impressive and necessary follow-up." Stuff TV


Praise for the original Bloom

“The very first iPhone apps were universally dull. And then Bloom came out. It was immediately obvious that something special was happening. The app was interesting on an artistic level – one that made you reconsider the relationship between technology and music. It raised the bar for musical iPhone apps.” Gizmodo

“Hypnotic and ludicrously addictive.” The Guardian

“A relaxing alternative to just about anything else you can do with an iPhone.” Wired

Brian Eno – musician, producer, visual artist, thinker and activist – first came to international prominence as a founding member of Roxy Music, and immediately followed with a series of critically-praised, pioneering and influential solo albums – including the soon-to-be-reissued Discreet Music, Music For Films, Music For Airports and On Land. His visionary production includes albums with David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, Laurie Anderson and Coldplay, whilst his long list of collaborations includes recordings with John Cale, David Byrne, Grace Jones and James Blake. Equally notable are his highly-acclaimed visual experiments with light and video, which have been exhibited all over the globe – from the Venice Biennale and the Marble Palace in St. Petersburg to Beijing’s Ritan Park and the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

Eno began collaborating with musician / software designer Peter Chilvers on Will Wright’s computer game Spore. Their shared interest in generative music rapidly lead to the development of a prototype for Bloom in 2008. In the intervening decade, they experimented further with the field, expanding their catalogue of apps with Trope, Scape and Reflection. In that time Chilvers has also acted as an engineer and technical advisor to Eno on a number of other projects. A series of multi-speaker installations around the world laid the groundwork for 2016’s The Ship, and they premiered Bloom: Open Space, a mixed reality installation in Amsterdam in 2018.

In addition to his work with Eno, Chilvers co-founded the Burning Shed label and online store, toured with Underworld’s Karl Hyde as keyboardist and musical director, and has recorded instrumental albums and collaborations with vocalist Tim Bowness.

Ratings and reviews

Android user. The app is fantastic in many ways but one , which really must be solved in updates. If you navigate away from the screen it stops. if you turn off your screen it stops. I use the auto play feature during work and I want the screen to go blank. I use it when going to bed and I want the sound to continue and really want the screen blank. I want to be able to navigate away from it to check email and have the music continue. let it work in this way just like any music app.

Not only a fine app, but a serious contender for Best Thing Ever. Is it an instrument or a time-waster? An intuitive-but-opaque compositional tool or a toy? A generator of seemingly random noises or a much-needed method of reclaiming one's personal sonic space from an endless daily cavalcade of sales pitches? Yes. Yes it is. Depends on what you want to do with it, doesn't it?

Repeats the shifting patterns too quickly - there is no control over the timing and that, for me, generally makes it too distracting to work well as ambient background music or during hypnagogia (when taking asleep). I'd be interested in an update.

What's new

Made a minor algorithm improvement which will make a significant yet subtle and intangible difference.
Removed diagnostics reporting.