Floating Points at Pohoda 2022
Another reconfirmed great name of Pohoda 2022 is Floating Points. London producer Sam Shepherd (who, by the way, has a Ph.D. in neuroscience) has been recording under this stage name since 2008. In March 2021, he released the album Promises, which took five years to record and which features the ingenious jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. This masterpiece already deservedly appears in the preliminary selections of the best albums of the year, which The Quietus describes as follows: "It astonished ... It is a celebration of sound at its finest and most pure: from the smallest scratch to cathartic crescendos, from spiralling improv to contemplative silences. Every note, whisper, bleep, and shift is significant. It is marvellously multifaceted but never obnoxious: a refreshing, one-of-a-kind conversation between jazz, classical, and electronic."
27. October 2021
Floating Points’ breakthrough album Elaenia from 2015 intertwines electronic dance music with his roots in classical music (he studied piano). According to Resident Advisor, the recording he spent five years putting together, was the best album of 2015. According to the portal, “jazz-fusion, ambient, classical, house— had merged as a masterwork” on the album. The album ranked #2 according to XLR8R and #1 in The Guardian’s charts, where the album is described as follows: “Elaenia flits, swoops and soars beautifully, impossible to pin down, let alone cage.” In 2017, he released a short film and soundtrack titled Reflections – Mojave Desert. Last month, a new recording named Crush came out. Unlike with the debut, he managed to produce the new album within five weeks. The result is, again, fantastic. Pitchfork, for example, confirms this by naming it “Best New Music”. According to the magazine, “Crush is something of a return to Floating Points’ more dancefloor-oriented material,” and Clash adds that it’s “truly, an album to savour”.
In March 2021, he released the already mentioned album Promises. The Time asks: "What do an 80-year-old jazz saxophonist from Little Rock and a millennial electronic DJ from Manchester have in common? Plenty, it turns out: a delight in gentle soundscapes and sharp disruptions; an endless curiosity and collaborative generosity; a spellbinding capacity to conjure complete immersion." According to the Paste magazine, the album is the best that has been released in 2021. Promises received the rating 9 out of 10 from Pitchfork and Resident Advisor said it was one of the best modern jazz albums. The Guardian gave the album the highest possible rating and a recommendation to play these recordings on a really good sound system. For example the kind we will bring to the Trenčín Airport at the beginning of July.