Floating Points – Elaenia

As one of the well-known faces of Shoreditch’s now defunct Plastic People nightclub (further alumni include Caribou and Four Tet), Floating Points’ debut album has finally arrived after multiple well-received EPs and five long years in the works. As befitting a music obsessed neuroscience graduate, the sounds here are as eclectic as much as they are cerebral, with Kenny Wheeler, Toru Takemitsu and Moreton Subotnick all cited as influences.  

Automated synths play out a like a Tarkovskian dream sequence on opener Nespole, while closing track Peroration Six sounds not a million miles away from Radiohead’s Everything in it’s Right Place if it were to be somehow channeled through a prog rock, jazz-fusion prism. Single-handedly justifying the wait is the three- part, 10-minute chef-d'œuvre that is Silhouettes (I, II & III), which could almost pass as a threnody with its weaving, elegiac strings and operatic vocals. A sublime introduction.