Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, also known Brian Eno, is widely regarded as one of the key pioneers of ambient music. Eno began his musical career playing keyboards and synthesizers in Roxy Music, and since then he’s gone onto enjoy commercial success in the majority of his creative endeavours.

However, for many, he’s still just a name that your dad mentioned a few times while you were growing up. Fortunately, it seems that Brain Eno is beginning to make something of a name for himself once again - only this time in the world of iPhone applications.

Bloom is the product of a creative partnership between Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, a musician and programmer. Incidentally, the two had previously worked together composing the sound track for the video game, Spore. But how will their brainchild fare in the highly competitive environment of the Apple Apps Store?

Bloom is essentially a tone synthesizer, which uses the iPhone’s touchscreen capabilities to give you control over literally hundreds of notes that you can play against a backdrop of ever changing ambience. To play a note you simply touch different parts of the screen, and a tone will sound - higher notes are located towards the top, and lower notes vice-versa.

However, what makes Bloom different from nearly every other music creation app out there is that it doesn’t attempt to squeeze a load of preset instruments into your device. In fact it is quite the opposite, giving you only one sound, or instrument, to play with.

This instrument, which sounds suspiciously like a piano, is completely polyphonic, meaning you can layer it hundreds of times and still get plenty of separation and clarity.

During testing we found that you could produce an almost infinite number of sounds, patterns, and melodies with just this one tone. Needless to say, if there were anymore sounds available it would almost certainly overcomplicate things - unless, of course, you’re actually Brian Eno, or maybe Rick Wakeman...

Bloom runs in two modes: Listen and Create. When you’re in ‘listen’ mode the app simply generates ambience that is controlled and changed over time by algorithms, courtesy of Mr. Chilvers. We really liked this aspect of Bloom as it can be used to relax to, or create a nice 1960s San Francisco area bay-feel to your bedroom if played under the right circumstances.

The algorithms create subtle and beautiful sounds, which would give bands like Sigur Ros a run for their money, and because they are well programmed they seem to constantly change - basically, you’ll never hear the same bit twice!

In ‘create’ mood, you’re in control, and by touching the screen you create a circle that blooms and plays a note, hence the name Bloom. There are literally hundreds of potential notes available to you in this mode, which means you can make some “seriously chilled” music.

Also, Bloom doesn’t use preset music or samples, so you’re actually making music on the fly like a real musician - go you! If you get bored of a certain pattern, or you’d like to start again, you simply give the iPhone a shake and the pattern is cleared.

While there isn’t much to do except touch the screen in Bloom, you can have a fiddle around with some settings, such as the rate of delay, as well as freezing a pattern so you can add bits over the top of it, and basically prog-out until your heart’s content. However, there is no save option, so creations made in Bloom are literally once in a life time pieces of art.