What is it: Avant Garde electronica
What does it sound like: House through the perspective of a neuroscientist
Why is it so good: It redifienes the boundaries of electronic music
By the time we started the album of the week feature, this album had already made a considerable impression in our collection and had to put to one side for fear of wearing out the grooves from over playing. But with Floating Points visiting us this week, it gave us a chance to pull it out again and marvel at its rare beauty once more. Floating Points’ Elaenia is one of the all time greats of electronic music for the forward momentum it applies to this form of creative expression and its ingenuity. It occupies that rare space between genres and styles that in the past would have warranted a completely new genre, but today makes it stand out amongst its peers. Laying a foundation on Floating Point’s expressive House aesthetic, Elaenia mixes elements of Jazz and House in the same pot in which Bitches Brew was stewed to arrive at something unique and inventive for the 21st century.
The album is forged in the expressive flurries of a genius mind and it is presented as something that combines a inquisitive personality with elements grounded in dance music. At the centre of the album’s charm is the Rhodes piano which acts as like a pencil drawing for all the other elements to take shape around and come together as something cohesive. It’s improvised, yet there are clear structures to the music that go through phrases on the wave of a feeling. It’s something that we’ve still not been able to categorise amongst the other albums on our shelf and as such it stands alone as a 21st century masterpiece.