Elaenia

Released

Elaenia was UK DJ, producer and composer Sam Shepherd’s (Floating Points) debut album. It’s an album rooted in club music but that’s not particularly aimed at the dance floor, with five of the seven tracks largely beatless, shifting synthetic soundscapes. The anxious space-jazz of Perforation Six and the epic future-jazz-funk of album centrepiece Silhouettes (I, II & III) are the exceptions, the latter employing buoyant jazz drums alongside Rhodes, strings and synths through its epic, almost devotional peaks and troughs. The title track in contrast is a calm and restrained collection of gently soothing chimes and soft synthetic tones, like a lullaby for androids. Elsewhere he crafts organic, fluid pieces of music that are part-neo-classical, part-jazz, part-electronica, often based around the simplest of melodic ideas that as the track progresses are fleshed out into moments of soaring beauty. Superb debut.

Harold Heath