Floating Points

On his 2016 EP, producer Floating Points (nee Sam Shepherd) offers two extended tracks (+ one track on Bonus CD) that occasionally sound like Neu! with steroids and 40 years of additional recording technology on their side.
"For Marmish Part II" is a gentle trip, constructed around a simple piano riff that fades in and out of accompanying collected sounds. Cymbals rustle, a choral whisper descends, or a cheeky synth appears. Without much real development, it avoids becoming tedious through his masterful arrangement. There’s no rush, no hurry: you could probably listen to it on loop for hours without even realizing, drifting away with every glistening key…

With Sam Shepherd’s Floating Points project moving further away from the dancefloor and former status as king of Plastic People with every release, it seemed like only a matter of time before he made a record with an orchestra and a free-jazz luminary. From that point of view, then, the music on Promises – a single, 45-minute semi-minimalist quasi-concerto for saxophone backed by various keyboard instruments and a string orchestra recorded in what appears to be a single, live, and rather spine-tingling take – is not a huge surprise. From the point of view of how much can be done with such sparse foundations, how to bring together fairly disparate musical worlds, and how captivating a recording can be, though, Promises is astonishing.

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has announced his new album Crush will be released on 18 October on Ninja Tune.

Floating Points, AKA Sam Shepherd, has a repuation for being a DJ’s DJ, but for his debut full-length he has made an improvisational suite of songs that have more in common with jazz and classical than club thumpers.

Channeling new age and spiritual jazz, the multidisciplinary artist’s debut solo album creates its own thoughtful and potent world with the help of many guests and many flutes.