FLOATING POINTS

Crush NINJA TUNE

8/10

DESPITE his widely respected reputation as a boundary-pushing polymath and sonically promiscuous club DJ, electro-jazz boffin Sam Shepherd has flirted a little too heavily with overly cerebral tastefulness on previous albums. Two years ago, his site-specific post-rock project Reflections – Mojave Desert saw the young Mancunian composer embracing Floydian soundscape territory with a full band, to sporadically sublime but somewhat sedate effect. Music as art installation can be a fertile pursuit, but it dilutes Shepherd’s full spectrum of passions, from circuit-bending modular synth experiments to marathon late-night sets at Plastic People and Berghain.

Shepherd’s third album, and first for Ninja Tune, gives a richer account of his different musical personalities, however. Full of densely detailed textural and tonal digressions, Crush draws on a broad jazz, classical and avant-garde hinterland. There are even wry allusions here to his shadow academic career as a neuroscientist with a PhD in the rarefied field of epigenetics. Even so, this album still feels like Shepherd’s most accessible, dancefloorminded, party-friendly collection to date.

Crush was born from a series of semi-improvised live performances two years