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

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

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

not sure this is a given

Nor do I to be clear. I think it's poorly framed as rhetoric because 'given up' is so loaded as a phrase but it does gnaw at me and that makes me think it's worthy of discussion. I'm not sure how you'd plumb for it and I suspect it'll always lead to an authenticity cul-de-sac but there we are.

To be clear, in no sane universe would anyone aim this at Pharoah Sanders! I was more thinking about the kind of language I've heard in responses to the album.

This is clearly shaping up to be 2021's "the music's OK, but what I really like is sneering at the strawmen in my head who like it better, or like it for the wrong reasons, because I think they're of a different class than me" album.

This absolutely works for me as ambient music. Granted, it’s a scented candle - but it’s a small-batch artisan scented candle, with distinctively pungent top notes.

listening and unless you were inviting music nerds people would think this was weird dinner party music

This grew on me, once the central motif stopped sounding totally insipid. Appreciate the way the electronic elements in Movement 7 sound like they're coming from somewhere, acoustically, rather than just layered on top.

i was invited to my first dinner by another vaxxed person and put this on as the first "dinner party" music since COVID. it was fine! I have no idea why you think this wouldn't be okay dinner party music. It was! She liked it!

Imagine eating dinner

I'm just not going to listen to this I think, because we all know what my reaction will be and none of us need it. I am going to post about not listening to it though. Gotta have A Take

Listened to it again this morning (on headphones - cans not earbuds - at the laundromat). I think my favorite non-Pharoah part is in movement 7, when it sounds like the intro to the Orb’s “Towers of Dub”. There are some nice proggy synth parts before that, too. The final track is kinda pointless, though.

i love this album and i'm never talking to any of you about it again

why won't any of you invite me to your spiritual jazz dinner parties

You need the right hat. No hat, no dinner. No dinner, no dinner jazz.

This album is beautiful!

I'm finally getting to this and so far I really like it. If music exists in three dimensions, and the vertical is harmony, and the horizontal is melody or forward motion, I think of this one as more of the third dimension, more spatial/planar, more about depth. I feel like there's probably a simple word for what I mean and I'm being dumb not thinking about it. Time feels slowed down beyond normal human time and the way the sounds relate to each other in three dimensional space seems like the focus. To the extent there's forward motion, it's the forward motion of an object that has been gently pushed in zero gravity space and just continuing it's inertial movement.

IDG the weird captain-save-a-pharoah posts upthread and they don't seem worth engaging much further. If anything seems condescending to make all those assumptions.

just catching up and this is really good.

I'm so partial to both artists' oeuvre that I tried to damp down my expectations for this, it seemed almost too ambitious. Was very pleasantly surprised by the superb quality of the result.

a million miles from the genuinely radical and wildly inventive approaches to jazz & electronics from Black Top, Moor Mother, the Rolling Calf, Angel Bat Dawid et al...Love Cry by Albert Ayler...wait till the new Sons of Kemet drops in May...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

Would any of these alternatives be recommended for someone who isn't very fond of free jazz or noise?

Gigi Masin is neither (and an all time favorite)

Lattimore is soothing repetitive harp music, no jazz in sight. For the rest it kind of depends on what you do like - e.g. Angel Bat Dawid doesn't code as free/noisy to me but some releases are not without skronk.

Try Nala Sinephro’s 1.8. Harp + electronics + some subtle sax here and there. Very nice.

Ulla in general is mostly electronic, but her most recent record Limitless Frame has live (or live-sounding) instrumentation that pushes it into a more ECM type frame. It's good though I prefer her Tumbling Towards a Wall. (I did not like the Sanders/Floating Points record at all so ymmv).

Thanks to all! Starting with Tumbling Towards A Wall and will move on from there. Any specific recommendation from Gigi Masin?

For me, Wind and his side of Nouvelle Musiques de Chambre 2 are where it's at. With the Music for Memory comp as a useful supplement.

definitely get talk to the sea. the new one, calypso, is better than its reception at the time suggested, ime.

Agreed Talk To The Sea is best entry perhaps, however I had a friend write it off unfairly because they thought all the tracks would have vocals like "Snake Theory". His music is mostly instrumental.

Thanks to this thread for reminding me of that Ulla album, which I have on now.

Would any of these alternatives be recommended for someone who isn't very fond of free jazz or noise?

the Irreversible Entanglements album on International Anthem has a little bit of skronk but i find it hard to imagine it would be overbearing for anyone not into free jazz. It is one of my very favourite albums of 2021.

Maybe the Comet is Coming?

not sure how i feel about this album. it kind of sucks? it's pretty i guess. but it has no soul.

That's harsh. The orchestral strings and harp (harpsichord ?) are beautiful ambient jazz, I actually like how static and peaceful that motif is. I've heard less inspired saxophone from an 80-year old. It's a very long piece though, and it's only one.

i'm with crut. once i saw pharaoh fall asleep onstage at birdland and this has similar energy.

Yeah I do t see how this is at the top of everyone’s year end lists. If we’re talking about autumnal works by artists of the same era, last year’s Archie Shepp duo album with Jason Moran crushes this imo. Shepp’s singing of “Let My People Go” haunts me.

The ideas are interesting but the orchestral writing seems pretty crude and rudimentary to me, there's little interaction between the soloist and accompaniment, and I don't see enough in that single quartal keyboard loop to want to hear it for 45 minutes. I was hoping for a more satisfying conclusion/reconciliation in the final section. I said it elsewhere but imo Douglas Cuomo's Seven Limbs was a much better composition for jazz soloist vs acoustic classical ensemble.

I like both Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points a lot and I guess LSO is an orchestra but yeah crut otm

have to agree, doesn't really bring out the best in pharoah, FP or the orchestra

best thing I can say it may introduce new listeners to pharoah

honestly find a lot of floating points bores me, although it all sounds nice and I'm very sympathetic to his projects

I don't know that I'd go as far as best of the year, but it's very very good. I was actually underwhelmed at first, but it really grew on me. It was a much appreciated balm during a pretty turbulent year, I wonder if that might play into how highly rated this has been.

agreed across the board there, jon.

i don't have the formal music education that a lot of the folks putting heavy criticism towards this do, so maybe that's why it's lost on me. but still it seems like this is, if nothing else, a very pleasant and rewarding listen.

Might've said this already but I repeatedly listened to this album in my hammock on hot summer evenings in August/September--sun going down, cicadas blaring. It was bliss. Very intimate recording and patient arrangements that might strike some in the wrong headspace as 'boring'.

I'm with the last 3 posters here, I like it just fine and it has a pretty unique atmosphere imho

Same. In my experience hearing people talk about this record there seem to be a certain # people who look to Pharaoh exclusively for scorching atonal honkfests and are disappointed he doesnt bring that energy to this, but thats just one facet of a 50+ year career. Its not AOTY or even very challenging, and it probably did benefit from being released when was (iirc one poster upthread referred to "music that wont wake the baby" getting a covid-era boost from critics), but I dont think it sets a low bar to praise it for just being a really nice-sounding longform mood piece

I mean, yeah, my fave Pharoah piece is "Harvest Time" so that makes sense, I come to him for bliss not skronk

I'm an old dog who's learned some new jazz tricks recently and this album hits all my joy buttons. It's a wonderful melding of electronics, jazz and orchestra - I feel it like I feel "In A Silent Way". It feels effortless and doesn't have to do anything more than envelop me.