Crush

Crush offers proof that Shepherd has quickly learned to harness its noise and power. In a live setting, this material might have the potential to blossom into something unruly, but on the LP it comes across as more mischievous than deranged.

Truly, an album to savour.

Shepherd’s work may be hyperactive at times, and is a dizzying listen when the chord progressions and rhythmic flights of fancy become congested, but it is an exhilarating ride that proves every bit as enticing as its cover.

Packed with mesmerising detail yet powerful enough to dance to, the result is electronic music that radiates intelligence and emotion. [Dec 2019, p.109]

At times it can feel that two albums are battling for attention at the same time as Shepherd takes the time to create a mood before happily trampling all over it. You can't help but admire what a very forward-thinking, brave move that is. It makes for an intriguing, distinctive album that you feel time will be very kind to.

Beautifully crafted, Crush unsettles with its quiet, fervent chaos bubbling beneath its surface.

Crush certainly comes across as fragmentary, as if a dozen tracks, at least a couple albums worth of ideas, were truncated, quickly sequenced, and packed onto one LP. That said, it's hard to imagine more forethought and deliberation resulting in a listen more riveting than this one.

Crush is an insight into Shepherd’s brilliant mind and – such is the sheer variety of this album – a way to inspire one’s own imagination.

The ideal meeting of brains and brawn over a journey that manages to feel both concise and exploratory.

Shepherd's most eclectic album to date, a richly pleasurable balancing act between brain and body, academic seminar and night club, cerebral experiment and sensory feast. [Nov 2019, p.32]

While most of the individual tracks dazzle, there's not much of a unifying theme the bind the pleasantly punishing beats, pastoral orchestral leanings and ambient drifts together. Even so, Crush may not be the album more recent converts to Floating Points may have hoped for, but it is worthy of our undivided attention regardless.

Crush may be some of Floating Points’ most assertive work, but sinking into its rich and deeply layered textures reaps countless rewards.

By most measures, Crush is an excellent record. But its aggression and obtuseness, for me at least, is relative—once the shock wears off, there remains a slight reserve, a sense that Shepherd's innermost rage has only fitfully overpowered competing aspects of his psyche.