FLOATING POINTS レコード& CD

Review: In honour of the Love Record Stores promotion Sam Shepherd has decided to offer up a new edition of his 2015 debut album as Floating Points, "Elaenia". While the bonus art prints included in the package are rather nice, it's the quality of the album - still one of his best solo releases, and that's saying something - that makes this edition a "must-have" for those who missed out first time around. Featuring a mixture of Tangerine Dream-inspired analogue synthesizer works, blissful ambient excursions, contemporary jazz compositions and hard-to-pigeonhole instrumentals that add deep electronic influences to this heady musical melting pot, it's an album that sounds as immersive, intoxicating and fresh on the 100th release as it does on the first. Basically, you need this in your life.

Review: Since releasing his first Floating Points record back in 2009, Sam Shepherd has constantly surprised. Predictably, he's done it again with Reflections: Mojave Desert, an album created from impromptu recordings of his live band made during a visit to Joshua Tree National Park. Inspired by their surroundings and the natural environment, Shepherd's ensemble have created a five-track set - and accompanying Super 8 film, shot and edited by the band's traveling visual artist - that's as atmospheric as anything the producer has released to date. While a unique proposition with its own distinctive vibe, the tracks variously touch on ambient, new age, spiritual jazz, woozy electronica, post-rock and the kind of Stockhausen-inspired experimentalism explored on Ragnar Grippe's recently reissued "Sand".

Review: We've been waiting on this one since "J&W Beat" six years ago; there's something about Floating Points sound that instantly lends itself to full-length album immersion. It's clear he feels this way too; using the album to delve deeper into electronic deconstructions and delicate ensemble arrangements. At its most adventurous and contemporary classical "Argente" is up there with Frahm, at is dreamiest and jazz-influenced "For Marmish" is a deeply cosmic affair with disparate chords making more sense than they perhaps should. At its most traditional Floating Points we hit the finale "Perotation Six" where the brushed drums are buried under layers of sound and elements in a way that's not dissimilar to Radiohead. Well worth the wait.