
FLOATING POINTS
Cascade (Ninja Tune)
After being very taken with Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points’ Promises, a 2021 album collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra and legendary jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, I was interested in diving into his solo electronically-focussed work finally. Cascade may have untethered the British-born Shepherd from his classical and jazz experimentations – also foundational in his academic roots studying composition – but the inherent airiness of both that genre foray and his stage name remains in this new album, creating a listening experience that fluidly percolates between dizzy highs and delicate lows.
Cascade’s opener Vocoder is tagged as a ‘Club Mix’ but needs no explanation, sonically situating you in a darkened room of sweaty, jumping bodies as its jittering, clanging and bouncing layers hold, uplift and break against the walls of an imagined Manchester dancefloor, the city Shepherd credits as an important adolescent influence. Birth4000 feels like it owes a debt to Donna Summer’s I Feel Love in sound and construction while Del Oro is a simmering tribute to the trance of the mid-90s. Ocotillo is where Shepherd begins the ‘comedown’: a hymnal suite that blossoms slowly and grows in unexpected directions, inspired by time spent in the Californian desert observing cactus-like plants rather than digging through Factory Records’ archives.
With Tilt Shift and Ablaze, Floating Points’ Cascade ends with the mellowing creep of the next day, the latter eschewing beats altogether in favour of a gentle instrumental hum, a weary head sinking into the pillow as sleep sets in.
words HANNAH COLLINS