Photo by OJ Slaughter
The hype around this one is real. Optic Bloom have been steadily, quietly, and patiently working up a fanbase over the past few years at the confluence of Boston’s hip-hop, R&B, and beats scenes, gradually adding to a repertoire of downtempo, melodic odes of self-affirmation amid a troubled world. A performance at the 2019 Boston Music Awards. Guest production credits for a handful of peers. Featured performances on a slew of other artists’ material (like Cliff Notez’s “Happy”). With that solid foundation in place, they’re ready to release their debut album, Space Garden, a title that feels perfectly reflective of Optic Bloom’s lush, astral style.
Built around the rapper-producer tandem of Flowerthief and Dephrase, the duo combines for a formidable tag team approach on their debut album to explore feeling like an other. Right from the get-go, on album opener “Part Time Friend,” we can hear a low-mixed spoken word intro from a hesitant speaker: “I don’t think I want to be here… I just want to go home.” This yearning gives way to Flowerthief’s emotive vocal style, at once as groovy and rhythmic as it is melodic, weaving their way through a unique style that makes it difficult to differentiate what’s rapping and what’s singing. This is mirrored by Dephrase’s production style, as informed by lo-fi jazz sampled beat making as it is by downtempo, bass-heavy electronic.
Album Art by Flowerthief
There’s a similarity to be found in the grimy style of UK R&B, especially on tracks like “Sadboi Sadgurl,” where Flowerthief sings from their gut, talking about “cheap, cheap love” where “all terms and conditions apply… you fall again, you fall, you rise, you fall again.” Optic Bloom meander through these cycles as a way to express “the constant sense of “otherness” and “alieness” that many marginalized individuals experience in their day to day live.”
With features from Boston mainstays like Oompa and Tim Hall (“Vow To Be Free”); Cliff Notez (“Time”); and Latrell James (“Movement”), Space Garden ebbs and flows through self-affirmations and vulnerable expressions of fear and isolation. It’s these moments of duality that give the album it’s most compelling quality: a conflict between free self-expression and emotionally altering self-doubt. Back-to-back tracks like “Fly and I Flew” and “Root Down” express a desire for freedom met in equal stride by a desire to “settle down.” Flower Thief raps, “Heaven find me in the room, Heaven help me make a room or a house or a help.”
As the album progresses, an intense focus on visibility, especially coming from a Black and queer perspective. The short interlude “Other Girls” finds Flowerthief delivering as honest a lyric as you’ll hear this year: “I used to wonder if I’m even a girl. I used to wonder, I wondered, I wondered if they could see me under, under. Can you see me under? Can you see me at all?” This works as an intro to the next track “See Me Love Me,” which finds Flowerthief expressing their own exhaustion at having to ask such questions with a simple list of demands: “see me, love me lonely.” After this comes the album’s energetic ending. The danceable “Movement” with Latrell James finds Dephrase’s production at an impressive peak, plus includes Flowerthief’s gloriously affirming lyric, “I’ve been praying for this day, I’ve been praying for my life all my black-ass life.” Followed by the similarly energetic “Spinning Outro” and closer “Side Effects,” the album wraps up without a minute wasted.
While some groups might not be able to balance flowing between liminal, in-between spaces and conflicting thematic content, Optic Bloom does so with intent and precision. It’s kind of the whole point of the album. In the group’s own words, Space Garden is “for the weird kids. For the perpetual “other.” For the black and brown kids sprouted out the suburbs who fled to the city. For the ones who never found home. For every human/alien who has reached for freedom and found themselves in the dark. Who threw themselves against rock bottom until light bled out. May this album be a map, a bridge, a friend.”
We all find ourselves in the dark without a guide at various times in life. If that makes us our own little Dantes, Optic Bloom finds us as Virgil in a dark, cosmic wood. Stream Space Garden via Spotify below.