★★★★★
For an artist so highly regarded for consistency, Sam Shepherd hasn't really stuck with a particular sound for very long. His precociously gifted and prodigiously clever talents have opened his compositions to more nuance and deeper complexity with each iteration of Floating Points--the shifting continuum between "Nuits Sonores" and "For You" leans as much on his early classical training as it does his lauded Plastic People residency...
- www.residentadvisor.net
2015-11-10
★★★★★
For an artist so highly regarded for consistency, Sam Shepherd hasn't really stuck with a particular sound for very long. His precociously gifted and prodigiously clever talents have opened his compositions to more nuance and deeper complexity with each iteration of Floating Points--the shifting continuum between "Nuits Sonores" and "For You" leans as much on his early classical training as it does his lauded Plastic People residency...
- www.residentadvisor.net
2015-11-10
★★★★★
THE CASCADING, 10-MINUTE hypnagogic jazz triptych, Silhouettes (I, II & III), that lies at the heart of Floating Points' extraordinarily beautiful debut took six years to make, its protagonist admits. It's a wonder it was ever made at all, given that during this time, Sam Shepherd finished his PhD in neuroscience, combining it with a DJ-ing and production career in the more thoughtful, eclectic quarters of dance music...
- www.mojo4music.com
2015-11-10
★★★★★
very 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 was that record of 2013, and , the debut of neuroscience PhD-cum-DJ , joins , 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...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-11-08
★★★★★
Sam Shepherd has brought both his academic knowledge of music and bountiful DJing experience to bear on his first, concise long player. This follows a stack of singles, principally for his own Eglo imprint but also for taste-making labels such as Ninja Tune and Planet Mu.
- recordcollectormag.com
2015-11-05
★★★★★
You'll have to forgive Sam Shepherd for taking seven years to release his first full-length record -- he was busy earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience. After releasing a slew of white label records in 2008, Shepherd (aka Floating Points) went on to sharpen his craft by releasing a handful of 12-inches and EPs before forming the 16-member Floating Points Ensemble. The long-awaited seems to benefit from this long gestation period, as the album's seven tracks are well conceived...
- exclaim.ca
2015-11-05
★★★★★
loating Points, AKA Sam Shepherd, has a repuation for being a DJ's DJ, but for his debut full-length he has made an improvisational suite of songs that have more in common with jazz and classical than club thumpers. Like his friends and , his music has a meditative quality and builds like a late-night set, though Elaenia is in a flock of its own...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-11-06
★★★★★
The title track of Sam Shepherd's debut album as Floating Points was inspired by a dream: A migratory bird strays from its flock and is swallowed up by the forest, mimicking the way our atoms are absorbed into the fabric of the universe when we die (or so goes one theory, anyway). We might find ourselves "reincarnated as a SIM card in Singapore, or as a beetle in Scotland," as Shepherd told Pitchfork recently...
- pitchfork.com
2015-11-03
★★★★★
Summary: More sleek and sultry house from one of the genre's most acclaimed young producers There's something rather exciting about listening to a new Floating Points jam, hearing those delicate and sultry, yet slightly demure melodies gently applying themselves so intricately and seamlessly over the pop and crackle of his minimalist percussion setups...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2012-04-12