I’ve had this album in my library for a while but haven’t put it on in its entirety until now. I’ve only listened to it all the way through once, so my mind isn’t entirely made up yet. I’m just going to write about how this initial listen affected me and what I thought about it.
Sam Shepherd has some of the cleanest sounding production of electronic music that I’ve ever heard. Sometimes there are really only two instruments playing but it’s so well mixed that it still sounds so full and even in denser textures it all sounds so controlled. There is never any doubt that you are listening to an absolute master of the craft. All of the sounds are straight ear candy, but his kicks in particular really do it for me (and all of those percussive sounds in “Tilt Shift”—god, I want to inject them into my veins). Also impressive in all of these tracks is the effortlessness of the progressions and emotional arcs. Each track moves seamlessly through its different sections such that none overstays its welcome, even the literal club mix track, “Vocoder (club mix)”. This might be sacrilege, but Floating Points feels to me like an alternate dimension version of Aphex Twin who releases only his most polished, focused tracks. This is no disrespect to AT though; the deluge of variety is a big reason why I love him.
Overall, the album is like a 4.25 for me. No track achieves the sheer heartbreaking beauty of “Falaise” from his 2019 album, Crush (an extremely high bar) or the shimmery wonder of 2020’s Promises (which has the unfair advantage of having a full orchestra and Pharaoh Sanders), though “Ocotillo” gets pretty close to the intensity of emotion, but there aren’t any strong skips and it has a solid, polished album experience.
Highlights:
- That scrungly little riff and the little breathy vocal chops in “Del Oro”.
- That part halfway through “Ocotillo” where you feel like you’re flickering in a great metal chamber with the bass rumbling through you and some kind of bard floating in front of you playing a string instrument.
- How “Afflecks Palace” is straight hacker music.
- The two-minute long fade at the end of “Ablaze” that lets you sit with your feelings as you process the album. I’m a sucker for albums that don’t just kinda end.