This is a truly joyous album, and a purely pleasurable experience.
Sanders’ performance is the star turn, seeming almost three-dimensional with his breath sounds and key-clicks interacting with Shepherd’s electronics, and the LSO’s blending of their instruments is always the moreish side of soupy.
The all-star collaboration between a producer, a saxophonist, and a symphony is a celestial event. But it’s Pharaoh Sanders’ playing that holds it all together, a clear late-career masterpiece.
This collaboration with Shepherd and the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra offers a stunning re-contextualisation of Sanders’ titanic tenor saxophone.
Its lengthy epic movements, gently textured and opulently lived in by the London Symphony Orchestra’s startled, spacey strings, could exist on a planet of their own—a rainy evening’s night sky with stars blinking dimly before the clouds.
Promises is a tasteful, spellbinding, and beautiful intersection of jazz, classical, and electronic music.
Certainly the most ambitious record of Shepherd’s career to date and probably the best, Promises is dream-like and totally captivating throughout.
‘Promises’ is five years' worth of experimental soundscaping condensed into one mind-boggling harmonic journey. A highly accomplished piece of music.
A recording that is more of a transcending mind meld than it is a collaboration.
Despite these players’ histories in creating abstract noise, Promises is one of the most unexpectedly quiet and beautiful albums of the year so far. It utilizes the sheer magnitude of its stars’ talent while showing a magnificent mastery of restraint.
There’s a timeless quality to Promises, an inscrutable sense that the album could hail from 30 years in the past or 30 years into the future. Of course, that’s what makes it a genuine intergenerational collaboration, this sense of time collapsing upon itself.
Perhaps it's reverence for the power of the expansive that makes Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders such a dynamic combination on Promises, their breathtaking collaboration.
The tremors from the encounter between Sanders and Shepherd resonating out into the infinitude. It leaves us in no doubt that we have just witnessed a meeting of monolithic proportions.
It's a subtly sophisticated piece, but it also creates space for Sanders to showcase his tender, measured, lyrical phrasing, abstracted scatting and, 34 minutes into this 46-minute marvel, a brief sputtering blast of free saxophone energy that proves, at 80, his fire remains potent.
Promises matches the patience required for the project’s realization. Built on a sparse keyboard figure, the composition at the core of the collaboration can initially seem underwhelmingly slender, even repetitively monotonous. Repeated listens gradually reveal a different story.
A combination of elegance, subtlety and sophistication; where jazz, electronics and strings coalesce in a perfect union.
Promises is a musical space for play and contemplation, where the attention to detail, stimulated by the repetitive leitmotif, makes the moments of variation and improvisation emotionally extraordinary.
It's an impressive if harmonically static musical edifice built on Shepherd's omnipresent keyboard ripples, over which Sanders' braying tenor sax emits billowing squalls of sound ... Promises exhibits a rare unique beauty.
Promises is an impressive collision oftalents, and sublimely lovely in places, but also frustratingly slight.
Promises as many of you know is my favorite album of all time and it is quite strange an album with no lyrics or vocals whatsoever is my favorite album, so I'd like to explain why. Promises is a collaboration between the legendary Pharoah Sanders, the fresh faced electronic artist Floating Points, and the whole of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Pharoah Sanders needs no introduction whatsoever, with his nearly 60 year career as a musician helping create classic jazz albums and formulate his ... read more
Less is more, and more is more.
๐ผ๐ฒ๐ท๐ด ๐ฒ๐ท๐ฝ๐ธ ๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฎ ๐ถ๐พ๐ผ๐ฒ๐ฌ - ๐๐ป๐ธ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ผ๐ฎ๐ผ
Sam Shepherd on the composition, London Symphony Orchestra on the performance, and Pharoah Sanders on the execution. Perhaps one would not fathom a partnership between the three acts, but indubitably, the value of the end product would be prodigious. I expected a grandiose delivery from the three brilliance through mighty showcases, and even with hindsight, ... read more
It’s quite fascinating hearing this repeating melody over and over throughout the entire full length project. It’s a centerpiece throughout every movement here. Everything else just tells the story on top of it. I never got sick of it. I was hypnotized. The whole thing feels really melancholic. Kinda depressed me a bit. Overall great listen
Foreword:
I wanted to preface this saying that I wanted to write this as a track by track analysis to show my feelings towards this piece and to show how effective it is at using each part of this 3 group ensemble. Hopefully you are willing to read this review and if you do I hope you enjoy it !!
A group of fantastic musicians coming together to make a masterful piece of art.
I've been going round to finishing Floating Points' discography after listening to from 2015 called 'Elaenia' ... read more
Promises has a repeating melody, but that doesn’t make it any worse than what a masterpiece this is.
"Promises" es de las cosas mas traspasantes y trascendentes que escuche en mi vida. Se siente como una especie de rayo de luz divino, con una forma de fluir hermosa y magnifica, con un ensamble extraordinario, un Pharoah Sanders que aporta una pasion y sonido increible, y Sam Shepherd que hace un trabajo inigualable con una ambicion tanto ambiental como progresiva. Un album que llega a lo profundo de uno, una maravilla.
1 | Movement 1 6:24 | 90 |
2 | Movement 2 2:31 | 87 |
3 | Movement 3 2:32 | 87 |
4 | Movement 4 2:31 | 86 |
5 | Movement 5 4:25 | 90 |
6 | Movement 6 8:50 | 97 |
7 | Movement 7 9:28 | 91 |
8 | Movement 8 7:22 | 89 |
9 | Movement 9 2:30 | 87 |
#1 | / | Magnetic |
#1 | / | MOJO |
#1 | / | Passion of the Weiss |
#1 | / | Paste |
#1 | / | The Vinyl Factory |
#1 | / | TIME |
#2 | / | Norman Records |
#2 | / | PopMatters |
#2 | / | The New Yorker: Amanda Petrusich |
#2 | / | Uncut |