Floating Points

just discovering this stuff -- elaenia is pretty amazing!

that's a very impressive live performance too!

new EP Kuiper
https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/kuiper

starts out like it might be a variation on the last album's sound, but this one is more krautrock/post-rock. (Or radiohead rock.)

FUCKING LUSH

This is exactly what I was hoping there'd be more of on the album last year, after Peroration 6 was the first thing I heard. Super pleased.

Last five minutes goes a bit Dave Gilmour but I can totally forgive that for the 13 minutes of jazz techno kraut that precedes it.

Getting quite a Where You Go I Go Too vibe from Kuiper.

anyone know if he plays w live band on current tour?

yeah, played with a band at the festival I saw him at last weekend

nice, hope to see him live this week

New EP's quite nice, think I like it more than the album.

Agree w/Ned, and it feels more like a mini-album than an EP to me. B-side is great too, would absolutely not mind more in this vein

http://pitchfork.com/tv/35-pitchfork-music-festival-paris/1909-watch-floating-points-full-set-from-pitchfork-music-festival-paris-2016/

So his new thing is out today - Reflections Mojave Desert. 5 tracks over 27 minutes recorded in the mojave desert as a 5-piece band. Two long (7 and 10 minutes) psychedelic prog jazz grooves, and three ambient-y explorations of what happens if you fiddle with an organ in the desert and approach it as a post-doc field recording project.

Ordered it weeks ago from his site and it arrived yesterday. Silurian Blue the 7-minute track, got a bit of play on 6music a while ago, and is pretty indicative (of course; there are only four other tracks!).

Headphones, though, wow. This sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. Not like a live album, not like a studio record. It's pretty slight in many ways (and he really is just doing instrumental prog now), but I also wouldn't want it to be any longer.

Comes with a DVD of s short film of the band playing and Sam wandering around with a field recording mic in the desert, which I've not watched yet.

The 10-minute track, Kelso Dunes, reaches somewhere he's not quite been before, whilst also being a logical kin to Kuiper etc.

Headphones, though, wow. This sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. Not like a live album, not like a studio record. It's pretty slight in many ways (and he really is just doing instrumental prog now), but I also wouldn't want it to be any longer.

I'm having difficulty reconciling the two halves of this paragraph and tbh your description doesn't riveting tbh, he doesn't need to go any further in that direction.

I had this all queued up for my Friday morning commute but that's prime listening real estate so I'll give it a go on Sunday morning instead.

new album is the best thing he has done IMO. less brainy but all the better for it. one of my favourite things ive heard this year. lots of daft punk style synth work (i dont know the exact synth but they used it a lot on RAM), and some gorgeous guitar. not seen the film but its very replayable. also perfect for summer.

OK this meddle/dark side shit on "reflections" is AWESOME. what a champion.

New track out today, download and (weird) 12". Ratio. 19 minutes. Which is why it's weird on vinyl, cos it's split somehow? Anyway, it's long, it's proggy, but it's NOT krauty / jazzy like the Reflections or Kuiper; it's much more house-y again, like a fusion of the early singles with Elaenia. Very nice indeed off a couple of listens. He's very tasteful, isn't he?

And why not? Said song:

https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/ratio-full-mix

Might be the best thing he’s done.

His new Late Night Tales is good fun. Very much in the, well, 'late night' section of late night in that it's practically beatless.

Tracklist: https://latenighttales.co.uk/products/floating-points

that looks great. plus Lauren Laverne reading Emily Bronte!

New stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8fFo4REHOE

Quite a lot of it is so ambient that you could do that without realising for a long time.

this is my issue with it really. floating points' last few singles haven't been dancefloor-oriented either but there was just so much going on in them, 11-minute tracks that really made full use of the running time. this is def a lot more subdued, maybe more subtle but also less engaging

― lex pretend, Sunday, November 1, 2015 1:36 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wonder if lex is pleased with this new one!

New album 'Crush' arrives mid-October.

Crush:

01 Falaise
02 Last Bloom
03 Anasickmodular
04 Requiem for CS70 and Strings
05 Karakul
06 LesAlpx
07 Bias
08 Environments
09 Birth
10 Sea-Watch
11 Apoptose Pt1
12 Apoptose Pt2

I loved Ratio and LesAlpx so I am psyched for this. Not a band release, just him making more dancefloor stuff, I understand.

The new stuff I've heard seems pretty next-level to me.

I was hoping he would go further into rhodesy space-fusion territory after Elaenia--like something with Mwandishi-esque sidelong jams--but the new tracks are pretty cool. Getting strong Aphex vibes from Last Bloom.

This new album is quite good.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/arts/music/floating-points-crush.html?

yeah on a couple spins it's one of my favorites of the year so far. The singles are nestled perfectly about the album, surrounded by some really incredible orchestral and synth driven songs that step through many different transitions and progressions over some relatively brief track times!

His new Late Night Tales is good fun. Very much in the, well, 'late night' section of late night in that it's practically beatless.

Tracklist: https://latenighttales.co.uk/products/floating-points🕸

quite like this but a lot of it sounds like a worse, less ambitious drukqs

I really love the Late Night Tales but this new album is rubbish. Dance music that's never broken a sweat. You can reaĺly feel how it stretches towards big emotive feelings and comes up so short, corny but without any sense of glee or euphoria

File beside Jamie XX and Bicep as dance music that wishes it was mid-noughties Kompakt but comes nowhere close

I'm not sure he's aiming to make people dance with most of this.

The album as a whole isn't as strong as the pre-release tracks and moving towards shorter tracks doesn't seem to have necessarily benefited his sound any, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with being detached and cerebral. Not all electronic music needs to be body music.

Yeah, I'm enjoying this - I think the singles sound much better in the context of the rest of the album

Eleania wasnt really trying to make people dance either but it was good and not gloopy. I think that's why I found this such a disappointment - he's been involved in so many better things than this before

See I found Elaenia a little underwhelming overall - after the singles and Peroration Six I felt that the mid-section loss of momentum as he explored pseudo-ambience was just way too close to torpor and emptiness. I much preferred Kuiper and Ratio. So far - and I've only listened properly a couple of times so it's early days - I feel like this has got a bit more dynamism and urgency to it. He's still not delivered exactly what I want him to, though, I don't think. Which would probably just be 45 minutes of Ratio and Peroration Six.

I have no point of comparison as I've yet to check out his previous material but this flows quite nicely despite its disparate gestures (there's even a Bach-esque adagio in there). I'm very curious to hear what he'll come up with next.

'Sea-Watch' vaguely brings to mind Vangelis's L'Apocalypse des animaux.

Coincidentally, in the context of the album LesAlpx has been making me think of Blade Runner, which I'd never thought before despite listening to the shit out of the extended version.

This album smokes Elaenia. That record never resonated with me and I couldn't even remember most of how it sounded. This one sounds iconic from start to finish. The songs fit together really well despite sounding so different. The equipment listing in the liner notes suggest a focused and minimal equipment setup (outside of vocals and acoustic instrument recordings) used consistently across most of the tracks. Love the creative and subtle use of compression all over the record too. Lots of nice attention to detail.

If I have any critique it's in the abruptness of how both Bias and the album itself end.

Yes, I also found the closer needlessly jarring, like he'd just thrown his arms up and decided it was time to move on, much to the listener's dismay.

The trope of making intentionally messy decisions for the sake of winning avant-garde points is kind of annoying among all artists? But it's impossible to argue whether it works or not in any given case, really.

I like this, not sure how much I'll go back to it, but moreso I'm jealous/impressed by the fluidity of his setup (and musicianship)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75iX1rnW9WQ

Actually this is growing on me as an ambient-ish album, LesAlpx is really the outlier

It's quite lovely!