Hypnotic Motion 3: Bloom Hour, mystical vocal deep house at dawn
Hypnotic Motion 3: Bloom Hour is about two hours of mystical vocal deep house, sensual and hypnotic, at 108 BPM in D minor. A rounded four-on-the-floor kick and a warm syncopated bass ostinato carry rolling shakers, interlocking hand percussion, shadowy pads, a distant breathy flute, sparse bells and a remote wordless choir. One intimate, breathy female alto sings clear English over the moving groove, and every refrain deepens on its last return.
We wrote the songs around one moment: dawn, and a guarded habit finally set down. A key always left in the lock so a lover can slip out is turned fast and carried back to bed. A wristwatch never taken off in bed is laid face down on the sill. Nine gold bangles worn to sleep so they wake her at any movement are worked off and shut in a drawer. A pillow carried to the sofa after a quarrel is carried back to its old hollow. In one song a window left off the latch for twenty years, so she could rise first at the ferry horn, is shut at last: "Twenty years I rose for leaving", she sings, "Now I wake with you".
Anora, an original Signal Art character, holds the screen in Bloom Hour. This is a Living Loop, a format created by Signal Art: one character inside a world built for the album, moving without a seam for the whole programme. It is her first loop outside the stars. She stands in a living world of flowers at the golden edge of dawn, beneath an arch of white and blush roses and wisteria, while a great bloom taller than she is opens one petal at a time and petals keep falling. The light travels from first gold through rose and lavender to a pearl dawn and back to gold, where the loop begins again.
Put it on for a night drive into morning, late work or a slow weekend dawn.
