Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, LSO: Promises review – extraordinary

(Luaka Bop)

Five years in the making, this breathtaking album transcends the genres each of its three collaborators bring to the table

Not strictly classical, jazz or ambient electronica, this one-track, nine-movement album embodies the highest, most etiolated aspects of all three disciplines. British artist Sam “Floating Points” Shepherd is the anchor here, an electronic free thinker with a neuroscience doctorate. He supplies recurring leitmotifs and Promises’s sense of gossamer, largely peaceable inquiry. Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders should need no introduction; in his first recordings for more than 10 years, the saxophonist mostly holds off the free skronk of some of his most famous recordings in favour of his other mode: deeply felt spiritual jazz interventions. (Sanders’s wordless vocals also add to the promise of Promises.) Halfway through, the forward-thinking London Symphony Orchestra strings turn up and the dappled otherworldliness enters a more cinematic and canonical phase, but hardly to the detriment of the piece overall, instead adding depth and weight. There is room here too for a highly sophisticated iteration of cosmic psychedelia, for drones and tiny rustles, for electronic birdsong and the audible thud of fingers on keys as the mood swings from succour to awe and back again many times. Recorded over the course of five years, this extraordinary collaboration deserves excellent speakers and a soft couch to catch the swooning listener.

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by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

Neuroscience, the cosmos and trees: going deep with composer Hannah Peel

From praise from Paul McCartney to writing music for Game of Thrones, the musician has had an extraordinary career so far. She discusses her next step - an album embracing the natural world through electronica

Paul McCartney knew Hannah Peel’s talent before the world did. He hands out pin-badges at every degree ceremony at Liverpool’s Institute for Performing Arts, which he co-founded, and where Peel studied music. In 2007, her graduation year, she’d been chosen to compose something to accompany each student walking on stage.

Peel had been advised to do a fanfare of trumpets, but refused; she wrote a minimalist miniature for vibraphone and marimba instead. “My principal hated it,” she says, laughing down the Zoom line. “But when I crossed the stage and shook Paul McCartney’s hand, he whispered in my ear, ‘I really like your music. Well done!’”

I grew up with a sense of transition, awareness that things are never stable. All that history that stays with you

Related: Obay Alsharani: the Syrian refugee keeping his mind free with ambient music

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by Jude Rogers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dance duo Justice begin legal action against Justin Bieber over crucifix design

Cease-and-desist letter sent to pop star, whose new album cover is accused of imitating Justice’s logo

Grammy-winning French electronic music duo Justice have accused Justin Bieber of illegally infringing on a trademark with the cover design of his new album, Justice, released on Friday.

The duo’s logo is their name with the letter T designed as a crucifix, a design trope that Bieber uses for his album cover. Bieber’s new merchandise also features a contested crucifix design.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Musician Michael Milosh, AKA Rhye, accused of sexual abuse and grooming

Canadian artist denies allegations by ex-wife, actor Alexa Nicholas, calling them ‘outrageously false’

Musician Michael Milosh, AKA Rhye, has been accused by his ex-wife of grooming and sexually abusing her.

Milosh has denied the allegations, calling them “absurd and outrageous false claims”.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism 2021: Milo Nesbitt on Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers

The Burgess Prize nominee reviews a homage to the sex and staying power of electronic music at London’s Design Museum
• Read the rest of this year’s shortlisted entries in the Observer/Anthony Burgess prize

Milo Nesbitt, 22, is currently studying for a master’s in English at Oxford University

At one point in Electronic, which opened in July 2020, you come to an array of variously sized plastic circles, packed tightly together and lit at an angle so as to project their shadow on to the wall behind and above them. There’s a moment when you wonder what these shapes are: some kind of abstract art, a mountain-range silhouette, a heartbeat. Then you realise, of course, that it’s a spectrogram for the song you’ve just listened to through your headphones – and that these black plastic circles are supposed to look like records. It’s a lovely reflection of electronic music’s ways of generating meaning without necessarily relying on lyrics. These signs could mean anything; they could mean everything.

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by Milo Nesbitt via Electronic music | The Guardian