The Latest album from Floating Points entitled Promises is a collaboration between Jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s a complete work, broken up into 9 movements on the record. It focuses around a singular motif that repeats throughout the entire album.

This blend of classical, jazz and a peppering of electronics took me several listens to get into and yet I have repeatedly returned to it over the past month to listen to the whole thing again, intrigued by its intricacies.

“Promises” seems like the kind of album that is rarely made these days. An indulgent and absorbing work of this nature rarely seems to get a budget large enough to gather a collection of talent this large, and for that risk alone it should be respected.

Yet it has much more to offer. Its distinctive sonic landscapes will be a joy for anyone who is into experimental music that focuses heavily on musicianship and sound design.

By its very nature, picking a singular “track” from the album is hard as the movements work so well as a whole. However “Movement 6” on Promises seems to be the crux of the album. It is the most instrumentally diverse and a great calling card for what the whole album is about when its firing on all cylinders. If you like the way this Movement sounds, It’s well worth listening to the whole thing:

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