What a treat the Brighton Festival has given us as a closer to the annual festival. I personally couldn’t have wished for a more innovative and forward-thinking act to see other than Sam Shepherd’s Floating Points. Taking a short step away from making some of the most interesting and best electronic music, Sam created an incredibly well-received debut album, Elaenia, which took in influences from his past releases (including classical, jazz, electronic, soul and Brazilian popular music) and put them into an ambitious and exquisite 43-minute LP. For many years now, Floating Points has been one of the most highly regarded song selectors in the world, creating DJ sets that feel like a journey though music’s possibilities. Now he brings a live band (including a trumpet, saxophone, flute, three violins, cello, synths, two guitars, bass, drums, as well as keyboards and synthesizers played by Sam) to the Dome to perform a show which I tout to be one of the best.

Having heard about but missed The Invisible incredible set at this year’s Great Escape Festival, I was overly excited to see them play as “support” only a week later. And so I should be; I saw them tour their first album (which was Mercury Prize nominated) and they were one of the highlights of the festival, they then signed to Ninja Tune and released an even better album in my eyes, plus the man behind the trio, Dave Okumu, has had his name in a huge amount of brilliant and interesting projects over the past few years. The band started with a bang, literally scaring the living daylights out of the audience with thick heavy bass notes that punched straight into your core, and going on to play crowd favourites as well as songs from their upcoming album Patience which sounded just as great. My only gripe with the performance has to be that the atmosphere lacked as the audience were all sitting. However, it did give you the chance to properly take in their songs, which including a fantastic Prince-inspired electro funk track that was made in mourning of his death.

With anticipation for this show already at its limit, the twelve-person band took to the stage as Floating Points. The performance started with Sam building slow wondering synth patterns that built in tension and drama with the introduction of strings and drums, only to then all erupt together for a monumental climax – the show had started and the whole room was locked in for the fixating duration. With Elaenia being a relatively gentle listen, the performance went through surprisingly aggressive rhythms to the most welcoming and softest minimalism, all working collectively to make one of the upmost impressive and remarkable audio experiences I have ever encountered. Syncopated synth melodies would dance with the elegant sounds of the string section, saxophone and keyboard solos worked as a commanding spotlight to bring you back into the room away from the entrancing laser visuals that had you in their musical reverie – Floating Point’s sound came across complete and perfect.

The recently released 18-minute epic, ‘Kuiper’, was a certain highlight. Building from relatively nothing, Sam’s synthesizer took you on an ever intensifying intergalactic journey of bleeps, pops and whines. Five minutes in and you realise the whole band has joined in on this seamless voyage, together creating layers of extraordinary ambient atmospherics around the monotonous beat, which then rocketed into an immense explosion of sound that could have killed stars. After hitting these magnificent heights, the sound fell back to earth, did it all over again, before evolving into a super-cool James Bond-esque melody (the part in the film where you think everything has gone wrong for Bond) lead by keyboard playing and electric guitar.

With the esteem the Floating Points name now holds and my high expectations for this show, this night sure had a lot to live up to. Sam and his band delivered and more, putting on a spectacle that was as astounding as it was ambitious. The end was greeted by a rapturous ovation from a crowd still trying to work out the remarkable brilliance they had just witnessed. My next thought goes straight to ‘where does he go next with this project?’ Obviously releases will keep coming from Floating Points, but will there be an album which will be played live similar to Elaenia or will there be a new direction?
Iain Lauder