Photos by Tylor Loring
BLOOM isn’t your typical group of NYC design punks. Their live performance alone should be enough to turn your own mind into an impossible jigsaw puzzle.
Distortion heavy, fuzzed out melodies causing static thoughts with lyrics chopping at your mind using cranky metaphors to create flowery imagery—this is NYC’s newest post-punk band BLOOM. Each of the four members have some sort of relation in art, whether it’s design, poetry or music and each of these talents are put to use.
Firsttime frontwoman Alex Graber flawlessly takes on the challenge of transforming her intimate poetry into critical punk thought pieces accompanied by some facemelting shredding. Surrounded by three veteran musicians, you would never guess that this is Graber’s first go singing on stage or BLOOM’s introducing to the music scene.
As true punk rockers, they use their creativity to channel their need for control. It’s not just the music that they keep polished to their liking, but also their aesthetic by keeping the band’s uniform monochrome, and presentation to the public by avoiding social media as much as possible.
You can currently listen to their demos via their Bandcamp, but the band says they’re currently working on recording more. In the meantime, read the entire chat we had in a Bushwick cafe and catch them on Aug. 25 with Tall Juan for Jonathan Toubin’s Soul Scream at Our Wicked Lady.
So you guys I feel like just kind of appeared out of nowhere. All of a sudden it was like, “yeah we’re in a band and we’re playing a show. Come!” How did that happen?
Jake Pflum: Around this time last year, I started writing some demos at my house and I had an idea of starting a really loud and noisy punk band with a girl singer. The idea was like what if Black Flag had a frontwoman instead of a frontman. I started thinking about what voice would make sense on the songs I was writing and I met Alex right around that time. She was coming to see our other band Native Sun and I asked her if she wanted to be in the band I was starting because I assumed that based on all of the shows I had seen her at and the fact that she had wrote about Native Sun, she worked at a record label. I was like, “Alex is clearly a musician.” Turns out she had never been in a band before. That ensued a few months of convincing and talking about if it was a good idea or not, sending some demos back and forth. It was a given that Mauricio would be playing in the band with me because I can’t play music without him. TJ came to us via Alex and that was a miracle. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect person. So yeah, sort of like that.
You guys are all in other projects. How does the sound of those other bands affect the sound of BLOOM?
Jake: BLOOM kind of started out of a necessity for me in a way, because I felt like I was, and maybe Mauricio was too, trying to force what BLOOM’s sound is now, what we like to listen to, and what we want to play into one single project. I felt like I was trying to force BLOOM’s sound into my other band and it wasn’t working and therefore I was feeling some sort of lack of fulfillment. So finding another channel to put that energy into has allowed me to appreciate my other project more because I understand what one band’s job is and I understand what the other band’s job is and it allows me to compartmentalize the creative energy and understand it a little bit more.
Mauricio Martinez: Yeah, I guess you realize, after playing with different people, what your job is in the band exactly. So if I want to get a little more intense on the bass I know some energy is for this kind of song for this band and this energy is for the other band. So in a way, at least speaking for myself, it has made me improve my bass style and the way I play.I feel way more confident now—not that I wasn’t before, but now I feel like a bass player completely.
Jake: You understand what makes sense for what sound and what project. I remember you playing these bass chords in a Native Sun song and I was like, “this doesn’t make sense.” But you do it in BLOOM songs and that’s where it belongs. It definitely helps you understand music better.
So we have two veterans and two that are trying out new things. What do you see BLOOM blooming into in the future?
Jake: Well we’ve talked a lot about expanding what the idea of a band is and what a band produces from an art perspective. People usually think bands play shows and bands record music and release music. We’ve talked about expanding what that is and going muilt-disciplinary. I don’t want to say some of the ideas yet because they’re still kind of percolating. But we’ve been trying to challenge where a band can play and what a band can create and we see it more as like a collective of different art forms and not solely music because we all have different mediums.
TJ, what about you? I know you’re in a bunch of different projects that sound completely different.
TJ: Yeah I came up on punk and garage rock bands. I was in several garage rock bands and for awhile I was doing some psychedelic/folk/krautrock kind of stuff. Then when I came back to NYC, I kind of put all of those projects to rest because I was taking some time to chill out and write some new music, figure out a new direction.
Alex asked me if I played drums and I had never played drums in a band before but I said yes anyways and got to practice and was all about just convincing them to let me be in the band at the time. I probably hadn’t played drums in two years. I played in high school, but this was my first band I’ve ever played drums in. I think I completely botched the first practice but I told her I really care. It came at a good time because I wanted to play heavier music and for me playing drums in heavier music is the most cathartic thing.
I think also for the band too, it’s us coming together to have something not be super stressful and we’re gonna play by our own rules and not the way you’re expected to play that whole album release cycle as a band and everything. I think for us too we’re not trying to force anything on it and I think it’s just our release from everything. I think it lies more in the way we’re feeling at the time.
I know about the other projects the three of you are in, but Alex, this is your first one. Fresh at it, how’s it feel so far?
Alex Graber: It’s good, it was actually even more random when Jake hit me up. He had DMed me in response to a poetry piece. So, basically I had been posting poetry on Instagram and at the time he had sent me a DM just being like, “this is actually the lyrical content I would like to see, do you want to sing in this project?” And I was like, “ehhh, it’s my poetry, I don’t know.” But then we ended up practicing together and the first time we all practiced together I was super nervous to sing. But after the end of that practice I felt super good and we all really connected. We went to Poikto a couple times after practice and I had mentioned to TJ like, “hey I know you play music, do you know a drummer?” And he was like, “I want to drum.” So we all got together and it just really fit. So it feels really good now and it’s been really fun and we were just obviously talking about how much fun I had after our last show and it makes me feel really good. I get really excited. It hypes me up.
I saw you guys at your first show at Our Wicked Lady. I feel like every show I’ve seen you play you never seem nervous. I’ve seen a lot of bands play for their first time and they seem a little shaky, but you never seemed nervous. Do you have a mantra you say before you go on stage? What’s your secret?
Alex: I actually really don’t drink that much before shows because I’m really nervous. I don’t know what it is because I really genuinely am completely nervous. I pretend like I’m not the whole time before we play and I just try to shake it off, but I really don’t have a secret. I just get on stage and just let it go.
Have you ever done performance art before?
Alex: I’ve read poetry live and I’ve done some weird commercial stuff, so I’ve been on film doing that. I get nervous for everything but maybe it’s just inherently apart of my personality where I can manage it. I’m also a lot older now. If you had asked me to do something like this 10 years ago, I would have been way less confident, given way more fucks and now I’m just like, “Ok, lets do it.”
What’s up with the all white uniforms?
Alex: It’s always been monochrome. These three all have design backgrounds. Jake makes a bunch of our posters. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve checked out the website but the website is designed by these two. I think coming into it the aesthetics were just as important as the sound in a lot of ways. I think Jake and TJ had this whole idea of “let’s be monochrome, lets look like this,” and I think that’s a big part of why we’re doing things differently. We’re concerned with a lot of elements and facets of the band outside of just the music and sound.
Mauricio: Talking about uniforms, it’s in so many different areas of music. You’re talking Devo but also like mariachi bands and even like Slipknot. It’s just a different way of approaching music visually and we think it’s so important. As Alex was saying, our backgrounds are in design. I’m not gonna buy a guitar if I don’t like how it looks. If I love how it looks and it sounds shitty, I’m still gonna buy it because it looks sick.
TJ: I also think it comes from all of us being creative control freaks and if we can control anything we’re putting out, then why not do that. It’s a big reason why we don’t have social media because we’re just living in what we can control.
Well, we’re out of coffee here. Any last words—life mantras, shout outs you guys want to say?
Jake: We’re slowly working on recording music and we’re gonna resist using social media for as long as humanly possible. But the website is up, you can go to BLOOMband.us and that’s where you can see our posters for shows, links to demos, stuff like that. We also have a cassette demo we did on there you can check out. But we’re gonna be putting out an album eventually.
Mauricio: Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
You can follow BLOOM on Instagram and see them live Aug. 25 with Tall Juan for Jonathan Toubin’s Soul Scream at Our Wicked Lady
