Review Summary: It's alive, it's alive!
Elaenia is the debut full-length LP from electronic music producer and neuroscientist Sam Shepherd, a.k.a Floating Points. It's not uncommon for musicians to have side-jobs, but mentioning that Shepard is a neuroscientist is just as important as mentioning that he's a musician. The core of the nervous system is the brain, which is what sets humans and other animals apart from rocks. Albums in a genre of music can be like rocks. Some are dull and boring, while others are vibrant and beautiful. Some are sharp and dangerous while others are smooth to the senses. While exploring, someone may pick up and collect specimens that they think are the prettiest. None are exactly the same.
Elaenia isn't a rock at all, though. Shepherd has taken all of his knowledge about the elements of animal life, human life, and pieced them together to create something magnificent. This is a living, breathing creature. Shepherd is Frankenstein and
Elaenia is his monster.
• Living things are made of cells.
Elaenia has seven songs, and each song is something to analyze and study. They all have their own unique sounds and instruments, like the DNA in a cell. As the DNA begins to separate and replicate with itself, the songs begin to grow and change. A significant example of this phenomenon is the first track,
Nespole. This track has very few core elements, but over five minutes, the song morphs these basic sounds into chord changes and odd synthesized noises that carry it along. One can closely examine each track on this album, and every time, they would find something new and interesting. It's very much like studying a cell.
• Living things obtain and use energy.
I swear, this album is
breathing. Throughout the entire duration of
Elaenia, there are slow inhales and long, drawn-out exhales. There are huge buildups and striking climaxes, comprised of layers upon layers of beautifully-constructed sound. An instance of one of these inhale-exhale sequences is the group of songs that begins with
Thin Air. It seems to have taken some inspiration from trance, or possibly house music, with arpeggiating saw waves that build and build up. The track that comes afterwards,
For Marmish, holds its breath for nearly six painstaking minutes.
Peroration Six, the final track on the album, lets out an immense, glorious release of air. It's an intricate, jazzy piece that can get anyone dancing, or at least tapping their foot.
Elaenia breathes. It takes in energy, computes it, and lets it out in some pretty spectacular ways.
• Living things grow and develop.
The aforementioned track
Nespole starts out very basic. It has loops of sound that very subtley fluctuate over five minutes. As the album progresses, this same outline applies to every song: A set of sounds or instruments that change over 4-10 minutes. However, even though each song varies wildly from any song before or afterward,
Elaenia still has a cohesive structure that flows throughout all 42 minutes. The album starts out as a mere child, and as it strengthens muscles and bones, it gathers more and more from its environment and uses it to create majestic artwork.
• Living things reproduce.
Okay, I'm sure Shepherd will develop sex organs for music so it can reproduce in his next album.
• Living things respond/adapt to their environment.
Even the artwork for this album adapts. The album artwork was created by hooking up a harmonograph to various sounds and noises from the album. The pens on the harmonograph reacted to the sounds and moved to the beat to create the jarring lines and curves on the artwork. On the surface, the adaptations are clear, but the music is even more complex than that. As the album grows, it picks up what it learns from other genres, like jazz or IDM, and uses it to its own advantage. Listening to
Elaenia is like watching a child grow into an adult. Watching it learn. Shepherd created his own unique creature, and set it off into the wild. It gathers information from the culture around it, and manages to topple everything else in the process. It manifests itself in one of the best pieces of musical art of 2015.
