There’s something oddly poetic about Copium arriving in the heat of July 2025. In an era defined by overstimulation, burnout, and the endless churn of online existence, Bloomfield Machine’s latest 17-track album feels like a breath drawn in slow motion—reflective, scattered, beautiful, and just a little unhinged. This isn’t just music for background ambiance—it’s an aural Rorschach test, a guided descent into the headspace of its creator, where fractured melodies meet intentional disarray and dreamlike loops shimmer through the digital static.
The architect behind this expansive sonic experiment is Brian Kassan, the multi-instrumentalist mastermind from Huntington Beach, California. Over the course of eight full-length releases, Kassan has consistently blurred the lines between genres, time periods, and emotional states. With Copium, he dives deeper into ambient and glitchy realms while still anchoring each piece with strong melodic sensibilities that have become a Bloomfield Machine trademark.
The title itself—Copium—perfectly encapsulates the album’s dual nature. It’s a tongue-in-cheek internet term often used to describe the emotional crutches people lean on when faced with difficult truths. But in Kassan’s hands, the term becomes more introspective, less dismissive. This isn’t an album that mocks escapism—it quietly interrogates it, stretches it, scores it with layers of melancholy and flickers of cautious hope.
Opening track “Clusterflux” sets the tone immediately with a sense of beautiful disorientation. Glitched beats stutter like skipping thoughts, while warped synth textures wrap around the listener like a fog rolling in over sunburnt skin. It’s a sonic statement that says: this isn’t linear, and that’s the point. From there, the album winds through strange, vivid corners of the psyche. “Aisle of White” is part ambient daydream, part haunted shopping trip; it’s eerie in a way that sneaks up on you, with subtle rhythms that pulse like distant footsteps in an empty mall.
“Deliberate Confusion” feels like its title—off-kilter and playful, but never aimless. Kassan dances on the edge of chaos without falling in, keeping the listener off-balance while never losing the thread of composition. And then comes the title track, “Copium,” which anchors the album with its emotional weight. Built around a woozy progression of descending chords, it plays like the musical equivalent of exhaling after holding in too much for too long. This is where the record’s heart beats strongest—dreamy, fragile, and unflinchingly honest.
The middle of the album dives further into exploration. Tracks like “Destinesia” and “a little bit of everywhere” embody the feeling of trying to ground yourself in a moment that keeps slipping away. There’s a hypnotic repetition to these tracks, but they’re never boring; Kassan understands the power of space and stillness in music. He invites the listener to linger in the echoes, to find emotion in the pauses between notes.
“Diminishing Returns” is an understated gem—melancholy, minimal, and perfectly placed. Its soft piano and shimmering textures evoke a sense of quiet resignation, like watching the sun set on something you loved but couldn’t hold onto. Similarly, “Trading Happiness” taps into the bittersweet feeling of giving something up in pursuit of something else, often with no guarantees. Both tracks show Kassan’s skill in building emotional arcs without needing a single lyric.
And speaking of emotion, Copium is full of it—but never in a way that feels forced or overly dramatic. “Hedonic Treadmill” rolls out like a commentary on the chase for contentment in a world where enough never feels like enough. “Sonder,” one of the album’s most cinematic moments, captures that fleeting, crushing realization that everyone else has their own vivid inner lives—just as chaotic and hopeful and broken as your own. These tracks don’t tell you what to feel; they let you arrive there organically, wrapped in reverb and glitch.
Later, “Thoughts are Noise” cleverly blends static and signal, turning intrusive thoughts into melody. “We All Live in a Narcissistic Dream” is as biting as its title suggests—an atmospheric piece that seems to sigh in exasperation at our collective digital vanity. Yet even here, Kassan never slips into bitterness. There’s always a thread of curiosity, even affection, running through the critique.
The album closes with a trio of tracks that could easily be mistaken for the ending of a film you’re not sure you understood—but you felt it. “Train to Nowhere” is a slow, looping ride through existential fog. “What’s next?” is a question mark in musical form—uneasy but strangely optimistic. And “Emophilia,” the final track, lands with a soft, aching resolution. It’s tender, almost romantic in its vulnerability, and it feels like the perfect way to drift back to reality after Kassan’s 50-minute emotional voyage.
Recorded in the intimacy of his Huntington Beach apartment and crafted entirely by hand using Reason DAW, Copium doesn’t sound small. It sounds vast. Yet its production retains the warmth of human touch—imperfections included. This isn’t algorithmic ambient or hyper-polished post-rock. It’s raw, thoughtful, and unmistakably personal.
With Copium, Bloomfield Machine doesn’t just offer a collection of tracks. It offers a landscape of the mind, a collage of 21st-century emotions rendered through digital brushstrokes. It’s an album that lingers long after the final note, asking more questions than it answers—and in doing so, it becomes exactly what it set out to be: not a fix, but a companion for the long, weird ride we’re all on.
This is the sound of someone feeling their way through the fog—and inviting you to do the same.
