Review Summary: Admirable levels of disco dancer, but no Miss Oranje
Personality is a tricky thing in electronic music! One of the most common complaints I see unfairly levelled against it is that whichsoever musician lacks idiosyncrasy — which is why it's so frustrating that I simply cannot see it with Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points), critical it-kid of the present decade, whose work has garnered acclaim within and without the electronic establishment and straddles the boundaries between tech house, IDM, breaks, crossover jazz and minimalism. His sound comes meticulously engineered and uncannily frictionless, as tasteful in its gloss and close attention to texture as it is tasteless in its ultra-sanitary aversion to a lasting impression; his most memorable work has seen him hold the floor for legendary artists (Pharoah Sanders, Utada Hikaru), while his least is almost entirely interchangeable with decades-old Warp Records fritterings, save for its updated production value and clinical precision. His production and sound design are well above reproach, yet his conception of songcraft and willingness to make the form his own remain almost heartbreakingly beige.
But no matter!
Cascade is the record to clear the air and prove his worth once and for all, to do with sheer club-hardened muscle what he could not with his hyperpolished traipse through IDM's greatest hits (
Crush) or by piggybacking off a jazz great for high-budget Hiroshi Yoshimura cosplay (
Promises). Designed to reclaim all the time he missed when he was unable to perform
Crush (released 2019) to live audiences due to the pandemic, this record sets itself out as a tactile overload, a flurry of beats, a propulsive marathon that sees Shepherd cast off his shackles, embrace the potential we are so often reminded he packs, and invite us all to dance the night away. However many reservations I've harboured over his output, now finally seems to be the time to let it all go and leave pure dumb adrenaline to tide things over.
It starts out promisingly: opener "Vocoder (Club Mix)" lays down a bruising tech house shuffle, sliced with jittery grooves and garbled vocals like flashes of electricity across the world's thirstiest nervous system, and the following tracks are plainly intent on keeping up the pace. As usual with Shepherd, his airtight production and clinical sheen have more to say than his forays of melody, but claustrophobic dancefloor fuel turns out to be an excellent look for this — his crisp style pairs with often-spartan arrangements, holding these tracks' robust BPMs and driving beats under an insistent focus. From "Key103"'s thudding techno to "Del Oro"'s flirtation with a more buoyant jingle,
Cascade's opening run makes sheer kineticism its calling card and makes considerable headway with such uncharacteristically bullish form.
It's good while it lasts — namely until just before the halfway mark, at which point Shepherd either gives up on the dancefloor itself or abandons the notion that his target audience were ever really standing on it. One hears an immediate warning sign in "Fast Forward"'s melodic frittering, which comes mixed substantially higher than the song's rather docile beat and cycles arbitrarily upwards through however many modulations of tone and melody, eventually approaching the level of tedium one associates with vintage Autechre going all-out up the wrong tree. This certainly does make for a change of pace (read: gradually strangles the album's momentum), but the more telling change of M.O. is his decision on both "Fast Forward" and the torqued-out synth barrage "Affleck's Palace" to introduce his beats with some form of high-pass filter run over their kick and breaks, respectively, only to restore the low end with a sharp mid-song EQ shift. The resultant lurch makes for an admittedly titillating dynamic shift in both cases, but it comes at the cost of saddling the entire first halves of two six/seven-minute songs with undanceable versions of unapologetic club beats. I can't in good faith claim this is the first time I've been exposed to multiple minutes of sustained breakbeat
waiting for the point at which it becomes possible to get down to, but this delayed-bass-gratification trick plays like a betrayal of the album's haptic promise and a veiled reminder that the Floating Points experience (insofar as his studio output goes) is an incorrigibly sedentary affair. Just pour one out for "Tilt Shift", which scarcely gets out of tin can frequencies at all, and be grateful that the backend of "Affleck's Palace" packs enough pyrotechnics to retroactively purge every memory of listlessness from Floating Points' entire discography (for just one or two seconds). Ugh.
Some credit must go to "Ocotillo", the sole track that both acknowledges and fully capitalises on the sly manner
Cascade gives up on being a dance record: the majority of this, the album's longest track, goes beatless in favour of a progressive electronic odyssey, all spiralling ostinatos and endless timbral flourish. It's one of the album's most impressive tracks while it's on (if characteristically short-lived in its aftertaste), and commits to its aesthetic-heavy approach with a refreshing level of conviction for the album's backend — right up until its inoffensive but largely extraneous techno coda, which clatters in like an unordered pineapple pizza, ends abruptly, and leaves me suddenly uncertain what either leg of the song has been in aid of. This makes for an apt synecdoche of the album as a whole, which pulls its weight at the points that count, fumbles mainly at those that don't, feels less successful holistically than it does as the sum of its parts, leaves me with anything but satisfaction by the time it's done, and does very little to address the question of when Shepherd will finally show the chutzpah and scope of vision to make a truly great work on solely his own terms.
Cascade moves and shakes enough to buy him a little time, at least — so what if it's not quite the long-overdue First Convincing Statement he's made on his lonesome? He'll gettem one day.
