Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders and London Symphony Orchestra - Promises (2021)

Remember, he is 80! I saw him 20 years ago, and he was definitely good and vital, but the show wasn't exactly the return of Tauhid and Karma.

I know. I'm just objecting to "albeit a hat-wearing one," which implies spiritual jazz has no grit or blood, an assertion I find generally wrong but particularly so in a discussion of Sanders

i.e., if Scik had said "albeit an 80-year old" I wouldn't have posted

"spiritual jazz hat" is not an ilx-ism btw
https://www.instagram.com/spiritualjazzhats

forks, the phrase is "spiritual hat"

JAZZ IS LIKE HEROIN TO ME ! ! ! ~~~~ ILM POST-1945 JAZZ ALBUMS POLL - THE RESULTS COUNTDOWN (now counting top 25!)

suggesting it's a derivation thereof but maybe i'm wrong? i've heard it in the wild.

I mean, sure, other people in the world have noticed the hat thing, but I think that phrase has a specific resonance on the borad. Happy to never talk about this ever again though :)

deal

listening to the record and it’s making me think of The Pavilion of Trees by Harold Budd

The Pavilion of Dreams*

for the record: Poll of SPIRITUAL HATS

I find this record quite frustrating. Some beautiful playing from Sanders, which makes me wish he had better material to work with. I don't mind that it's a pastiche, but it is nowhere near the level of the stuff it is imitating. With Alice Coltrane's or Sander's own compositions, the music might have repetition but it is always developing, always shifting the pulse, always colouring the harmonies with new variations.

By contrast, Floating Point's harmonic palette feels bland and restricted. And above all else, I find the sheer rhythmic squareness to be quite grating. The central motif is beaten into the ground again and again and tarnished through lack of development. It's a pity, because Pharoah is in good form, and he is a musician I always enjoy listening to. But I can't say I enjoy Floating Point's arrangements very much, they seem marred by a certain kind of neoclassical sensibility that is terrified of letting anything dissonant or strange into the music. The final result is a great musician in a pedestrian package, some nice moments but not quite transcending that.

This is spot on Mirostones. I think your point about a neo-classical sensibility is particularly astute. The strings reference Alice Coltrane in the most obvious way, and while the heavy atonalism of her arrangements on World Galaxy wouldn't be appropriate here, there's none of the complex harmony or intensity you get with even her most serene pieces. It feels very much like a jazz equivalent of middlebrow contemporary classical, referencing more radical stuff while making it politely bourgeois. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up in the same kind of earnest chill-out pantheon as Max Richter's Sleep, although obviously the presence of Sanders instantly makes it 1000 x more interesting and affecting than any of his posh muzak.

I must say I'm surprised it's not been reviewed in the Graun yet, but the Observer has published a review, so the daily will surely follow. Just hope we don't get a Petridish effort that patronises the readership by making centrist dad digs at avant-garde jazz.

in the record's defence, i think it flirts with something much more interesting - on "Movement 2" for instance, which is kinda sublime - but some of the valleys (like "movement 6" iirc) are close to schlock.

People throwing around words like "schlock" ITT have clearly never heard Pharoah's version of "The Greatest Love of All."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZFXpnpM5nk

Someone upthread mentioned not being able to think of another jazz record utilizing a central motif so strongly...and while some might not consider it so, I'd argue that Gania's use of the guembri forms the absolute backbone of one of my favorite records of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaPnidEujwM

Brotzmann's stuff with the gnwana musicians is fantastic. Last year's Catch Of A Ghost was brilliant too. William Parker's Double Sunrise Over Neptune is another one with some great riffs/motifs underpinning the tunes. Obviously they're doing a very different thing to PS & FP - a more forceful kind of trance music, with much more spontaneity and dissonance. And a drummer like Hamid Drake - who's on both those projects - can find infinite variation in a groove, so it never gets dull. FP is going for a more serene, blissed out thing, and I get why people dig that, but I just find his version of that to be predictable and polite. That harpsichord motif, and the overall lack of harmonic development or spontaneity, gets monotonous.

Gnawa!

Stew, totally. I guess I was just trying to raise an example of 'spiritual jazz' that relies on singular motifs running through a whole record, with the WELS concert being a good example off the top of my head. (I also just plug this record at every chance I get, it changed my perspective about 16 years ago when I found it in a forlorn freeform bin at my uni radio station).

I will also say— I like this FP + PS record okay, but the description of it as 'polite' is exactly right. It also doesn't go in many unanticipated directions...While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the sound is so lovely, it's certainly more 'supper time' music than I was expecting.

Gonna listen to this now, never having heard (or heard of) Floating Points or Pharaoh Sanders and having no acquaintance with this style of music but a rabbi friend of mine said it was amazing

I think I... don't know how to listen to this? But I will give it more goes.

#6 in UK album chart. Who'd have thought Sanders would finally have a top 10 album in his eighties.

I don't find myself wanting to go back to this much, but we'll see. I tried to slide it in for Sunday morning crossword time but got a "no saxophones, please". :)

(also it's wild to me how many people haven't heard of Pharaoh Sanders, but I was a jazz nerd)

Yeah, I've had to explain who he is far more than i would've expected.

Also I will never forgive Pharoahe Monch for forever ruining my confidence in spelling Pharaoh

i'm generally extremely skeptical of "too polite" as a criticism, i think it's pretty much a meaningless phrase that just means "i don't like this that much and i want to say it's for a reason"

I'm generally skeptical of people who are extremely skeptical of "too polite" as a criticism.

It means its bourgeois dinner party music, bro.

Which is fine, but I mean, that's not really what I was anticipating.

of all the things to reasonably anticipate sounding "bourgeois" (loathe this term fwiw), collab btw a symphony orchestra, jazz elder statesman, and luaka bop recording artist is pretty much the top of the list

the only person I know anything about is Sanders. Floating Points mean nothing to me. So if approaching from that perspective, it's maybe slightly surprising.

God yr a miserable lot, I'm saying it's a nice album but not what I was anticipating. Get over it.

I'm still really enjoying this, works best as morning music for me

There’s a classic ilm zing where poster a disparages something as “dinner party music” & poster b says something like fyi dinner party music is great if you have friends & know how to use a fork

ahem

not sure that cleaving tofu proves you know how to use a fork, I'm dubious

I literally defend Windham Hill stuff on ILM, and posted in the ECM thread last week. I'm not opposed to dinner party music. Stop projecting.

I do get that this is a bit of a surprise if you come to it only knowing Sanders

for some reason the FP dude's twinkly nonsense works for me here, I think b/c it is indistinguishable from (and blends with) the more delicate orchestra parts.

Haha I wasn’t having a go table I was just reminded of that classic post of yore ❤️

sorry wins, I was just trying to clarify my position— it's a lovely album, but because of Sanders' presence and my lack of knowledge re: Floating Points, I guess I was expecting something a little more wild.

not sure that cleaving tofu proves you know how to use a fork, I'm dubious

i know they did some anal cunt stuff during these sessions hopefully will see the light of day in the deluxe reissue someday

First listen winding down right now. Really, really enjoyed this as a meditative, early morning experience.

(Also note that I don’t have a lot of PS foreknowledge.)

This album is lovely, but a lot shorter, slighter and accessible than I had expected from either of these artists. Not a bad thing

Given the people involved, I think you could make a decent bingo card for the descriptors that are going to get chucked at this (Pharoah because where's the fire? Floating Points because record collection music, the symphony orchestra being way too on the nose): safe, bourgeois, boring, flat, dinner party, coffee table, polite, torpid, middle class, bougie. It makes me think of Ogmor's rant on the Mary Lattimore thread - the short version of which is that it sounds like music for people that have given up. I mean he was obviously trying to get a rise out of people (and how!) but there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere. I suppose a thought experiment is something like 'what if this were x musicians?', would it be getting the same interest?

Fwiw, I was armed with my little bingo card when I put this on and ended up really liking it. I'll admit I'm projecting a Pharoah narrative as my get out of jail card (something like: I need to see this as redemptive, evidence of peace at the end of his life, a spiritual cwtch from someone that knows) but I think it's lovely either way.

I thought this was fine ambient music for a calm Saturday afternoon but I can't imagine returning to it. The part with the big string crescendo felt really obvious, like it was designed for the penultimate scene in a BBC crime drama. I think about other music from a similar universe I've enjoyed lately - Gigi Masin, Mary Lattimore, Ulla - and I think the obvious defecit this has is that it lacks personality, it doesn't feel comparably unfamiliar or singular.

Conclusion: EOY winner

fwiw i tried putting this on at dinner last night and imo its way too sleepy to consider for an actual dinner party

the short version of which is that it sounds like music for people that have given up

rage, rage against the dying of the light making an effort to enjoy unpleasant music for some reason

I listened to this on a walk at dusk yesterday and it’s just not for me. It’s so formal and whatever nonexistent movie it’s soundtracking is not a movie I have any interest in seeing. The big Disney cinema string climax is a no, thanks. Loved Sanders, throughout, though!

Also, anyone who would put this on at a dinner party is a total psycho