Album Review: Floating Points – Crush

Much has been made of Sam “Floating Points” Shepherd’s PhD in neuroscience. The news that arguably the most ‘cerebral’ of electronic music producers has made his most dancefloor-friendly album to date is somewhat a shock.  

To an extent, it marks a return to the spirit of his early singles, but with added studio nous. Less overtly clever but with more immediate joy, Crush still sounds intrinsically different to the music of his peers. The album’s sound is minimal, clean, at times seductively shimmery, and would sound best in a big, high-ceilinged room – as exemplified on Last Bloom where there’s plenty of space for the mind and body to soar. LesAlpx too, with its perky bird-like trill, eases toward harder tech-house territory with an abrasive, threatening bassline which creeps with an assassin’s stealth, transforming it into a real killer. Shepherd has reeled in the jazzy explorations of Reflections – Mojave Desert and the epic EP Kuiper, but there is still an expansive feel that other producers can’t hope to emulate. It’ll set off amygdalas the world over.