Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises
It's football (AFL) Grand Final day and I can hear my neighbours getting ready for a watch party. Probably not the best time to be spinning an intricate album with all the commotion. I’m not a huge listener of the ambient music but I own a couple of records that I guess some would say fall in the genre. I find Sam (AKA Floating Points) and his trajectory quite fascinating. From a young self described nerd kid hanging out at record stores on his school lunch break, to a neuroscience phd, dj, musician and producer to then winding up having lunch with Pharaoh Sanders and collaborating. Apparently Sanders heard one his albums and reached out. Pretty incredible really! Admittedly, I haven’t listened to any Floating Points solo output knowingly. I only really knew him as a DJ (sorry Sam). In 2023 we were off to a Melbourne trip and I was excited to head to one of my favourite record stores. A couple of days before arriving I saw an Instagram post that both he and Four Tet had been to said record store and cleared the wall records. It was indeed raided by the time we arrived.

This album came out in 2021 which was a difficult year for me. I resigned from my old job which felt bitter sweet, we were all navigating our lives from covid, my health was severely deteriorating and I needed to make a difficult decision about irreversible surgery. It was such a weird time. I remember hearing this album on headphones for the first time and tears falling. It was beautiful and moving. I was grieving for a lot of things then. I remember putting this on after my surgery when I could finally spend time on the couch in the living room. It was a rainy weekend afternoon. It felt wonderful. It might have been the pain killers…or a sense of relief.

Upon re listen now after some space and feeling much better, with the the spring air wafting inside, it was very peaceful to listen to.

#nowplaying #nowspinning #vinyl #records #floatingpoints #pharaohsanders