Promises

It astonished ... It is a celebration of sound at its finest and most pure: from the smallest scratch to cathartic crescendos, from spiralling improv to contemplative silences. Every note, whisper, bleep, and shift is significant. It is marvellously multifaceted but never obnoxious: a refreshing, one-of-a-kind conversation between jazz, classical, and electronic.

It is a key work – a significant milestone – in the grand history of not only Sanders’ career, but the whole free jazz style he helped pioneer. ... This is a truly joyous album, and a purely pleasurable experience.

It’s 2021’s finest collaboration, and one of the year’s best albums so far.

There’s a timeless quality to Promises, an inscrutable sense that the album could hail from 30 years in the past or 30 years into the future.

Promises is a genius work, a victory for slow releases and the spacious. Sanders sounds as much ahead of his time as ever, while Floating Points again proves the efficacy of well-executed minimalism.

Nothing is rushed, but nothing is lingered over for too long, either. And as gorgeous as Shepherd’s music and arrangements are, I keep circling back to Sanders, his horn now quieter but just as emotionally powerful as when he wielded it alongside John Coltrane at age 25. ... On this piece, a clear late-career masterpiece, it’s saying plenty.

‘Promises’ is five years' worth of experimental soundscaping condensed into one mind-boggling harmonic journey. A highly accomplished piece of music, Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points both excel in their newfound exploratory duo with a piece of work which will go down in jazz-cross- electronic-cross-classical history.

What is on display here is the potential of unbound artistic striving. I dare say this may not only be Shepherd's magnum opus, but one of Sanders' greatest works as well.

As the musicians begin to ebb and flow toward the ninth and final movement, it's clear that Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points are so metaphysically in tune with their latest creation that their respective musical personalities almost disappear into the waves of sound, making Promises a recording that is more of a transcending mind meld than it is a collaboration.

“Movement 9”, at just two and a half minutes, puts a resplendent cap on proceedings, the LSO’s strings tying things off with forlorn grace and pomp. It’s like an echo of what’s come before, the tremors from the encounter between Sanders and Shepherd resonating out into the infinitude. It leaves us in no doubt that we have just witnessed a meeting of monolithic proportions.

Make no mistake, the payoff that Promises promises is by no means immediate. This is music to savour with eyes closed in a dark room, headphones on and all other distractions firmly yeeted from sight.

Eighty-year-old sax great Sanders pushes his sound to its most heavenly extreme. [Apr 2021, p.73]

Promises matches the patience required for the project’s realization. Built on a sparse keyboard figure, the composition at the core of the collaboration can initially seem underwhelmingly slender, even repetitively monotonous. Repeated listens gradually reveal a different story.

Not until the latter half of the album does the orchestra fully come alive, with a rich and immersive passage on Track 6 — sometimes regal, sometimes bluesy — that almost eclipses the motif, but not quite. And then there is Sanders’s tenor saxophone, a glistening and peaceful sound, deployed mindfully throughout the album. He shows little of the throttling power that used to come bursting so naturally from his horn, but every note seems carefully selected.

This might be some of the most calming music you have ever heard. It is billed as “a private listening experience.” Put this on before you go to sleep, and it should certainly relieve any tensions or anxieties. Peace.

It's a subtly sophisticated piece, but it also creates space for Sanders to showcase his tender, measured, lyrical phrasing, abstracted scatting and, 34 minutes into this 46-minute marvel a brief sputtering blast of free saxophone energy that proves, at 80, his fire remains potent. [May 2021, p.87]

Promises doesn’t always come across like a true meeting of equals. Laswell used the saxophonist as a plug-in element in the late 90s, Michael Mantler’s Jazz Composer’s Orchestra did the same on 1968’s Communications, and there’s a bit of that feel here. A player with as unique and instantly recognisable a voice as Sanders always risks becoming a gimmick, but his performance here is stunningly beautiful, and the album would be unimaginable without him. [Apr 2021, p.57]

The trip is well worth completing despite Sanders' early exit.