It’s been 10 years since Sam Shepherd began releasing music as Floating Points, and on his very first releases—the breakbeat-fueled “K&G Beat,” the sashaying “Vacuum Boogie”—the UK producer directed his focus squarely at the dancefloor. Over the past decade, Floating Points’ music has gotten looser and more diffuse, dissolving from the jazz-kissed garage of 2011’s Shadows EP to the vaporous, improvisatory Elaenia, his masterpiece to date. But with his new single “LesAlpx,” Shepherd returns to those long-dormant dancefloor instincts.
“LesAlpx” is as driven a track as Shepherd has ever made, and as stripped bare: The bulk of it is taken up by a swinging, unstoppable drum groove. He brings color to the insistent, one-note bassline by dialing in a glowing layer of overtones in constant flux, his fingers restless on the knob. It’s an exercise in careful restraint—until it isn’t. First, an even boomier bass throb, unfathomably deep, cracks the space wide open; then, after a fadeout and false ending, he goes full prog, picking up the beat and laying on a lugubrious synthesizer melody that is the precise opposite of his spring-loaded drums, as though his coiled clockworks were suddenly replaced by one of Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks. It’s music befitting a sci-fi epic, or a sorcerer’s rites.
| A | LesAlpx (Extended) | 10:34 |
| B | Coorabell | 6:05 |
