Every so often, a wordless electronic record turns up that genuinely doesn’t sound like much else around, mixing digitals with real instruments, and vestigial dance cadences with a restless jazz feel. James Holden’s The Inheritors was that record of 2013, and Elaenia, the debut of neuroscience PhD-cum-DJ Sam “Floating Points” Shepherd, joins Holden, Four Tet and a few others in this recherché fraternity. These seven elegant tracks have Persian rug-levels of process and detail; one, Nespole, is named after the Italian for medlars. But all the nerding-out is secondary to the emotional pull exerted by these creeping, tickling and soaring tracks.
