- Floating Points' Vacuum EP sounds a bit like Motor City Drum Ensemble if Danilo Plessow, like, knew how to orchestrate a full band and stuff. Sam Shepherd, the man behind the project, likes the same sort of dusty soulful house sound as MCDE does on his Raw Cuts series, but it's smoother, less overtly loop-driven. The tracks on Vacuum flow, maaaan.
"Vacuum Boogie," as the title suggests flows upwards, straight into air. The melodies reach, reach, reach until you're nearly ready to dive into the track yourself and push them where they so obviously want to go. This sort of unresolved tension is where Points, AKA Sam Shepherd, excels. You're either hanging on to the edge of your seat or hanging on to your dancing partner waiting for the hit. The same goes for "Truly" and "Argonaute II," on a more muted scale. The groove is paramount, the instruments locked into a Bolero build that only rarely gets extinguished, only to be built up again. Like Plessow, Shepherd's talent on this particular EP is in creating glowing bits of soul and then simply letting them run their course. Both producers often create more challenging work elsewhere, but Raw Cuts and Vacuum Boogie are a classicist's dream.
Tracklist A Vacuum Boogie
B1 Truly
B2 Argonaute II