How Floating Points Made the Best Jazz Album of the Decade
2024-10-10 · 5 min read
Promises, the 2021 collaboration between electronic producer Floating Points, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra, is one of those rare recordings that defies every genre category while achieving something genuinely transcendent. Nine movements built around a seven-note harpsichord motif, four years to complete.
Sam Shepherd conceived the project after years of admiring Pharoah Sanders' spiritual jazz recordings. The initial sessions were intimate, just Shepherd on keyboards and Sanders on saxophone improvising in a London studio. The London Symphony Orchestra parts were added later, building orchestral swells around the duo's improvisations.
The result is 46 minutes of music that moves from near-silence to cosmic grandeur and back. Sanders' saxophone enters tentatively, then soars. The orchestra swells beneath him. Shepherd's harpsichord motif repeats throughout, providing a meditative anchor. The dynamics require headphones or a good speaker system to appreciate fully.
Sanders passed away in September 2022 at age 81, making Promises one of his final major recordings. That context adds weight to an already heavy piece, transforming it into something elegiac. His playing throughout is restrained compared to his earlier free jazz intensity, but the emotion is overwhelming.
Critically, the album was universally celebrated. It appeared on year-end lists across genres, from electronic music publications to jazz magazines to Pitchfork and The Guardian. The project proved that boundaries between electronic, jazz, and classical music are entirely artificial when the musicians refuse to acknowledge them.
Promises matters because it models what collaboration across musical traditions can achieve when ego is removed. Shepherd didn't try to make a jazz album. Sanders didn't try to make an electronic record. They made something that belongs to neither category and both simultaneously.
