On the Rise
atmos bloom

They brought their trusty camcorder to document panoramic scenes of Tokyo skyscrapers, lush gardens framed by torii gates, and hordes of pedestrians filling street markets with colour and noise. The pair were thousands of kilometres from their home base, yet stuck in the same nagging cycles of uncertainty and fear. If you squint, you could mistake the footage for a London cityscape; it’s true that wherever you go, there you are.

Gratton and Paterson, partners in life and music, comprise dreamgaze project atmos bloom. Their time in East Asia, in part, inspired their upcoming sophomore record Everythingness – 10 tracks capturing the complexity of independence, opportunity, and change. 

In the music video for lead single “Everything”, clips of Tokyo and Seoul are layered over more familiar glimpses of London and the Devonshire coast. Gratton recites contradicting words of advice she’s received over the years, trying to make sense of it all: “Try to be someone / Put your worth elsewhere.” Where do we belong, and how do we get there?

Seven years ago, Gratton and Paterson met at the University of Manchester when the latter’s band put out an advert for a bassist who “ideally could sing.” Gratton didn’t know how to play the bass, but she could sing and play guitar, which was good enough. “I actually applied to [Paterson’s] band twice because [he] put up an ad and then the other guitarist put up an ad with completely different songs,” Gratton says. “Maybe that was a sign.” 

Today, the pair sit beside each other in their cosy, dimly-lit flat, where Gratton does her best writing. They politely take turns responding to my questions, glancing and gesturing towards one another, but never interrupting. It’s a little different from their writing dynamic. 

“She comes in like a whirlwind,” Paterson laughs, impassioned and energetic. He hails from North Yorkshire; Gratton’s from London. He opts to keep work and music separate (“I work to pay my bills”); she’s a digital marketer for Domino Records. He is the resident “technie,” calculated with a close attention to detail. Gratton believes their differences compliment each other – and I do too.

Music was, and remains, Gratton and Paterson’s common ground. “We definitely both have parents that love music and we always grew up with iconic records,” Gratton says of her mum and Paterson’s dad, who trained them on 70s new wave and glam rock. “I feel like we have very similar early childhood favourites – the bands we always come back to.” The two that come to mind are The Cure and New Order.

At uni, Gratton and Paterson’s band leaned into indie rock and shoegaze, citing Sonic Youth, Pavement, and julie as influences. “I think we’ve always been more shoegaze-inspired rather than making shoegaze,” Gratton says, on pulling in elements of psych, lo-fi, and grunge. The band found a practice space in Trafford and played weekly gigs around Manchester until early 2020. “We had the space and we were just having fun and making lots of noise,” Paterson says, “but then COVID just killed it dead.” 

When Gratton and Paterson found themselves on opposite sides of the country in lockdown, atmos bloom was born. “It became a lot more messaging and sending stuff to each other, and that’s when me and [Gratton] realised we had lots of other stuff that we weren’t sharing with everybody else, because it didn’t quite fit,” Paterson says. “But actually, what we had separately worked together quite nicely.” The duo wrote and released their long distance self-titled EP that year – two songs written by Gratton and two by Paterson. 

Upon returning to Manchester, they decided to make a debut record. “We’d sent the EP to Spirit Goth (Vansire, CASTLEBEAT) and they hadn’t got back. So we went and released it and they got back to us and said, ‘If you do anything else, let us know,’” Paterson says. “So all of a sudden, we were sort of unleashed. COVID was done, we felt like we maybe had a label, so we were like, ‘Let’s make a record!’” 

Released in 2022, Flora is a collection of jangly dreampop tracks, drawing inspiration from Alvvays, Beach Fossils, and that first summer of post-pandemic bliss. “Flora was fully us,” Gratton says. “No one else was involved at all with making that record. We played everything on it and we produced everything,” a minimalistic, DIY charm they keep to when performing live. “What you see is what you hear,” Paterson remarks of the band’s limited PA output.

Shortly after Flora’s release, Gratton and Paterson relocated to London, ushering a weighty transition into adulthood. “We were constantly writing and recording music, but a lot of it was working out how the hell we were gonna make living in London work,” Gratton says. On top of the financial strains came questions of belonging, self-sufficiency, and the meaning of home – questions that would become the bones of their second record. 

Gratton and Paterson wrote the bulk of Everythingness in chronological order, with the exception of a few songs to fill in gaps. For the pair, it made sense for the record to follow the emotions as they came, instead of clinging to a specific mood or concept. They vacillate between knowing and unknowing, confidence and doubt, and whether to embrace the passing of time or panic. “Neither the ups nor the downs linger for too long,” reads the record’s press release.

Second track “Closer” examines one of these balancing acts: channeling self acceptance while mourning the younger, more naive inner child. In the song’s chorus, Gratton sings to herself, “You’re the only one I need / You can have all parts of me / I feel that you are here with me / But I miss her.” She celebrates her strength with a quiet longing for what once was, softened by Paterson’s airy guitar.

Midway through the record, Gratton and Paterson lean into a grittier sound for ‘sister tracks’ “Feel” and “Waiting”. They lack direction and true autonomy, a pendulum swing into existential angst. In “Feel”, Gratton’s vocals are swallowed up by a fuzzy arrangement, embodying the elements outside of our control. When the noise washes away, and she’s finally alone, Gratton sings, “What you thought was yours / Feel a shrinking sense of remorse.” Then, the tempo picks up and she resigns to the noise once again. 

Similarly, its follow-up, “Waiting”, evokes a dreamlike eeriness, reminiscent of Broadcast and Stereolab electronica. Gratton expresses her distrust towards a society that functions on patriarchal governance and late-stage capitalism. “I’ll be there waiting / When the darkness sets in,” she sings, prophesying an inevitable doomsday. 

“Feel” and “Waiting” were the only songs on Everythingness recorded live with a full band. “We felt like they worked being very raw, and the vocals are basically dry on them, which is not something we normally do,” Gratton says. “They were the only two [songs] that were being called that way.” 

Gratton and Paterson cannot pinpoint when they started writing Everythingness. In the four years since Flora, the pair has tinkered with parts of songs and recorded loads of demos, but they can’t identify the moment at which this new era began. This ambiguity is symbolic of the life transitions that inspired the record – blinking and finding oneself deep in flux.

As there was no clear start to Everythingness, there is no end. By the tenth and final track “In Its Place”, Gratton and Paterson haven’t arrived at a crystal ball or a mythical portal to universal truths. But, that was never the point. “Chained to the moment / Cause I can’t stop to find the way,” Gratton sings, over ethereal harmonies and synth. Her last challenge is whether to resist the unpredictable movement of life or to relinquish some control.

Everythingness is atmos bloom’s most experimental work yet, in subject matter, genre, and affect. “People already have heard a more jangly, bedroom pop record, but I’m excited to have the more varied tracks out there,” Gratton says. This record will meet you where you are, on either side of the pendulum. It won’t give you all of the answers, but it’ll help make the questions feel less terrifying.