FLOATING POINTS — Elaenia

London centric debut album from Floating Points with a host of guest musicians and vocalists. the label say " Sam Shepherd spent five years putting together Elaenia, juggling the production with his DJ commitments and his now-completed PhD in neuroscience. The album takes its inspiration from classical, jazz, electronic music, soul and Brazilian music, much of which can be heard in Shepherd's DJ sets. There's a long list of contributors, with Tom Skinner and Leo Taylor (drums), Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne and Layla Rutherford (vocals), Susumu Mukai (bass), Alex Reeve (guitar), Qian Wu and Edward Benton (violins), Matthew Kettle (viola) and Joe Zeitlin (cello) all featuring. Shepherd also provides some of the vocals. Shepherd's influence on the album extends to the cover art: he built his own harmonograph to create Elaenia's sleeve, using fibre optic cables that were connected to light sources and responded to bass drum hits and other sounds. Aside from a couple of early excursions on R2 Records and Planet Mu, Shepherd's solo material has come out through Eglo Records, the label he co-runs with Alex Nut. Records like Vacuum, Shepherd's breakthrough release in 2009, and 2011's Shadows, which scored a five-star review on RA, have cemented his reputation as a classy, inventive producer. On top of that he's also released music from his Floating Points Ensemble project, and produced some of Fatima's 2014 album, Yellow Memories. "