What do you do when you help create the best album of last year? Where do you go? How do you follow that? This is the quandary Floating Points (Sam Shepherd) finds himself confronted with, having combined with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra to conjure up last year’s impeccable Promises.
His answer is to return to the dancefloor and serve a hard-driving, pounding reminder of his earliest professional incarnations as a DJ capable of moving the floor in majestic unison. Some jittery keys, more than a hint of two-step and some typically euphoric dance vocals drifting in and out of the mix combine to make “Vocoder” a slice of pile-driving, club-friendly magic.
Whether this signals a new album on the horizon or simply functions as a standalone single, it demonstrates the same ability to build to crescendo that was so magnificently heard on Promises. Whereas that release was all about engaging the mind and eliciting the keenest emotions, this is about something simpler and more primal—the urge to lose yourself in dance. God knows we could all do with more of that.
LISTEN:
