Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders’ hybrid jazz odyssey is a meditative symphonic work that delights in immersive beauty

A hybrid jazz odyssey in nine movements, Promises joins the dots as it aims to ease the soul. The end result of a five year collaboration between electronic chameleon Floating Points and righteous jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, this meditative symphonic work delights in immersive beauty. It’s all about subtle musical gestures and nuanced interweaving, with each party presumably content to allow much of their tapestry to emerge only after multiple listens. As an experience, Promises gets richer through familiarity.

Sanders and Floating Points extend this approach to the way in which they utilise the London Symphony Orchestra; that is, quietly. Passages are underscored with emotive tones rather than overdone with overt signals as to how the listener should feel. Perhaps inevitably, comparisons will be drawn to Alice Coltrane’s work with orchestras. Whereas the vibrational power of her compositions is at once transcendent and confrontational, Promises opts for an entirely different mode. Immersion rather than resistance if you like, offering a settled score instead of settling scores. This is neither a failure of intent nor realisation. Indeed there are depths of feeling waiting to be unlocked over time, but meanwhile there are seas of calm and oceans of hopefulness to contend with.

Promises Bandcamp

Stewart Gardiner
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