The second album from Floating Points – Manchester-born producer Sam Shepherd – is immediately visceral. Shepherd is a neuroscientist, and his sound has often been more cerebral and delicate than that of his UK electronic music peers (he first emerged at the peak of dubstep and breakbeat). His 2015 debut Elaenia was met with much critical acclaim, and this follow-up retains Shepherd’s intricate exploration, while pushing his sonics to a new realm of intensity. The opening track Falaise swims with familiarly warm orchestral sounds, yet Crush as a whole crescendos into moments of bleeps and whirring that invoke a disarming anxiety.
The album’s title, says Shepherd, is not to do with a romantic yearning, but with the helplessness of contemporary inevitabilities: climate change and self-serving politics. His signature cosmic lightness is often married here with weightier sounds: the urgent UK bass on LesAlpx; the slowburning elegance of Karakul juxtaposed with dissonant glitches; Bias pairs lithe garage beats with an eerie melody. Beautifully crafted, Crush unsettles with its quiet, fervent chaos bubbling beneath its surface.
