Floating Shrine - Connecting (Decaying Spheres) [Chill Out]
- The Slow Music Movement
- May 13, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 8
After his somewhat intense debut, relative newcomer floating shrine opens the studio door & draws back the curtains on his altogether more serene new LP for Decaying Spheres. The fresh air has lifted the dense arrangement clouds, the joy of nature is caught on microphone, the sunlight warmed the forgotten piano in the corner & made the synths shimmer, resulting in a super chilled, pleasantly glitching, new age attuned exploration of the ambient condition.
What the Relese Notes Say
Warm organic arrangements shatter icy electronic chatter to form clear sonic artworks.
Decaying Spheres proudly welcome back Floating Shrine to build on his impressive debut with a release inspired by trips to Japan and fuelled by a talent in building textured soundscapes.
Each limb of Connecting follows a methodology that finds glitchy textures confer and seek a place of comfort alongside beautifully played piano and swelling pads. In doing so, Floating Shrine creates short voyages that crackle with an icy futurism while flourishing as graceful, classically-coded movements.
Opener to the LP, Empty (feat. Wayd), offers a melancholy piano sequence before forceful notes rush forward in a moment of ecstasy, lined by crisp jumbles of feedback, like the last epiphanic moments of an android’s life before they are decommissioned forever. The experience is dynamic, with Floating Shrine being unafraid to send fiery comets of sound past the listener, then mixing them with the enlivening patter of trickling water.
The artist displays a striking mastery of this innovative style as electronic elements calm as well as ferment atmosphere. As so in Looking Back, where wistful almost formless keys are plagued by whizzing accompaniments, only for these to be rested as an electronic toy piano ambles slowly past the listener, bringing a quaint energy to an overtly cinematic listening experience. All the while, recorded sound paints a backdrop of human interaction amid this confluence of synthesis and spirit.
At times proudly striding onward with an epic force inspiring a feeling of overwhelming epiphany, and at others, nestling gently into teary moods of deeply moving piano-led balladry, Connecting positions itself as a truly modern sonic journey. Listeners are brought soaring over beautifully-crafted tracks, charged with fizzling electronic energy and imbued with a divine warmth.
Floating Shrine returns and presents an incredible development from his last outing with Decaying Spheres. A crackling ambient release with a beauty that is both painstakingly unique and innately moving.
CREDITS
Produced by Floating Shrine
Artwork by Krystyna Curtis
Mastered by Tim Crompton
Words by Liam Murphy
