36
Circuit Bloom

THE REVIEW

A replicant walking silently in a futuristic city made of mirrors and cubes, amidst the chemical air of an endless night punctuated by neon and infrared lights that infest an artificial and nonexistent horizon.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I envisioned during the listening of the new EP by Three-Six (36), Circuit Bloom. A work of soft, suspended, dramatic, moving, and dark atmospheres that will envelop you and transport you to a futuristic dimension akin to Blade Runner. A slow, suspended, and surreal journey in an abstract, virtual, and minimal world that will keep you glued to your headphones throughout its entirety. Circuit Bloom consists of 6 songs (plus "revisions" of 5 of the same, called "versions") composed mainly of synthesizers, piano, and various ambient effects, which make the surreal and sci-fi atmosphere that permeates the work even more tangible, drawing the listener into it. Its harmonic textures of synths, keyboards, ambient sounds, and harmonies make the listener one with the imaginary world approximated by 36, which waits only to be completed by our most vivid imagination, only to be activated.

The titles already speak for themselves even before the music: "Inoxia" (like the Datura Inoxia, a flowering plant known for its narcotic, sedative, and hallucinogenic properties), the title track "Circuit Bloom" itself, "Changing Faces (Static Places)", "Metropolis", etc. All this is sublimated by a cover that reflects the simplicity and minimalism inherent in the music: a gradient of colors ranging from yellow to dark blue, created on a "crystallized" texture. And this is enough to launch the listener into the world already mentioned earlier and in the introduction. If I saw what you read at the beginning, you yourselves can see something else.

Listening to this music and imagining the "stage" evoked by the fusion of it and our imagination is somewhat like witnessing a mental movie. Or a dream. A long dream. During a cryogenic sleep.

Such a hypothesis would indeed be very fitting, being a work that draws its inspiration from Cyberpunk, a borderline and dark world, but at the same time surreal and dreamlike, where nothing is real, and nothing seems to let you think so. A world that, even before Vaporwave, was depicted with atmospheres like those impressed in this work.

Or, as 36 himself describes it: "about people living on the fringes of society, finding ways to deal with the hardships they face, through the manipulation and exploitation of technology"