Crush is another bold step on Sam Shepherd's ascendant musical journey. His first full-length release since 2015's Elaenia forms a beautiful balance of beat-driven electronic tracks and jazz inflected writing.
The album opens with ‘Falaise’: a beautiful piece for strings and winds, ornamented by stuttering effects. ‘Birth’ is an elegant keyboard track, performed sensitively on the Rhodes Chroma vintage synthesizer. ‘Anasickmodular’ and ‘Environments’ build to inevitable climaxes, with soaring synth lines over dense electronic percussion, before breaking down into sparse pointillistic textures. ‘Les Alpx’ is Floating Points' equivalent of a banger, tied together by an elegant melodic gesture.
The disjointed beats and textures of the latter half of the album would be at home in an early Warp compilation, yet they are combined effortlessly with Floating Points' inimitable melodic sense. A carefully constructed statement, this album surveys an eclectic variety of genres yet is tight and beautifully formed.