Hi, everyone. Casthony Cadetano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Floating Points album, Cascade.

Yes, here we have the newest LP from UK electronic music producer, Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points. It is his third solo album and the first to follow the incredible and critically acclaimed crossover that he did with late jazz great Pharoah Sanders back in 2021, Promises, a mind bending and progressive combination of electronic music and spiritual jazz, with some instrumental accompaniment from the London Symphony Orchestra.

I've had a few years to reflect on how just amazing and incredible this album is, and I still feel like I'm blessed and amazed to be able to live in the same timeline as a crossover such as this.

However, I would not go into Cascade expecting anything on that level per se, because Sam is most definitely stripping things down, going back to basics, and returning purely to producer mode, and doing so in a way that I think will remind listeners exactly why he is in the place that he's in today, why he has the clout and respect that he does, as he is once again masterminding a bunch of nuanced and heady and groovy electronic journeys, many of which get pretty lengthy on Cascade, which is a very fitting title, mind you, because a lot of the tracks on this record feature a variety of different developments and ideas, musical metamorphoses that all overlap and gradually shift into one another.

But yeah, in comparison with Sam's last solo full-length LP, Crush, back from 2019, Cascade may not be as texturally or stylistically diverse, but it does feature a longer run time spread out amongst a shorter tracklist of songs. The vast majority of these tracks are a master class in tension, groove, and development. Just absolutely entrancing. Shepherd goes about achieving this with a bunch of different instrumental palettes, start and endpoints, as well as musical ideas like the punchy kicks, vocal chops, ascending cord progressions, and piercing crescendo toward the very finish on the club mix of the opening track, "Vocoder", which again undergoes a very sophisticated and linear evolution.

The same could be said for "Key103", which features this plucky bass line whose notes gain more and more length as the track progresses, as the whole thing develops into this glossy but bustling tech house ranger.

Following this is "Birth4000", which may have one of the shortest and cut and dry progressions on the entire record. But the track's brevity and lack of overall development is made up for by the fact that it does have the catchiest and most driving and visceral bass line. Like by a mile or two, this is handily the banger of the album.

But then we go back into more subtle and gradually developing territory on "Del Oro", which features some eerie, skipping, interesting synth leads, backed by lots of pumping beats and subterranean bass lines. Many of the elements on this track are relatively simple, very clear sonically. The layers themselves are not too complex or anything like that, but it's still impressive just how much mileage Shepherd gets out of all of these sounds despite that. Just by making them undergo a series of very gradual manipulations as every step of this six-minute progression is captivating.

In the second half of the record, Shepherd switches things up a little bit, starting with the track "Fast Forward", which features these insane disorienting synth layers that are quickly stumbling over themselves and eventually drop off and give way to one of the tightest bass and beat combos on the entire record. Also loving the more organic sounding percussion on this track, which I think is a really nice touch.

Then switching things up further, "Ocotillo" from here begins in a very abstract and ambient space, but eventually, over the course of eight minutes, graduates into one of the speediest and most intense payoff on the entire record. The only downside of which is that I wish it had a little bit more time to develop at the tail end. This track could have even been longer and still enjoyable. All of that being said, though, again, the very ambient first leg along with the throbbing synthesizers to follow that fill out the midpoint of the song are all very gratifying in terms of development and progression. Mesmerizing and dazzling even, the whole thing feels like a lift off into space.

Then after this, "Afflecks Palace" is just pure warehouse rave mayhem with rattling tambourines and sonar synth sequences, all of which eventually gets swallowed in this absolutely cavernous reverb, making this track one of the most interesting in terms of using space bass and effects to define its progressions, plus a sick little drum solo to finish things off at the very tail end.

I will say, though, the final moments of this record is where I feel like a lot of its greatest ideas trail off. On "Tilt Shift", we have some basic IDM Twittering going on. Texturally and rhythmically, it does not feature as strong a development as many of the other tracks here. And then the closing track takes on an ambient direction, which... it is pretty while it's on, but again, as far as progression, it's not nearly as captivating as anything to come before it. It's a very unceremonious and super low-key way to end the entire album off.

So yeah, major criticisms of the record. It does start a lot stronger than it finishes. Some progressions definitely pale in comparison to others, like on "Birth4000", which again, as explosive as that track is, doesn't go nearly as many places as a few other songs here. And overall, I do think this this record could have been texturally more interesting at points. Even if I do think the progressions on Cascade over here are more thrilling and engaging, I do have to admit, there definitely were some bolder overall moments on Crush back in 2019.

But with all of that being said, I still found this record to be a very thrilling and enjoyable, cut and dry combination of techno and house with some great quality sounds at the baseline of every track, stellar progressions, and a very gratifying edge of your seat vibe that I think will keep electronic music fans coming back throughout the rest of the year, which is why I'm feeling a light to decent eight on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Floating Points, Forever.