Promises

When the review said dreamlike they weren’t kidding. Lovely and interesting.

This album came out in the throws of the COVID-19 lockdown. When everything was so heavy I decided to buy a new turntable and around the same time I bought this record. It was everything I needed at the time. And it still is.

Ravishing and ravishinger – spare and serious, elegant, expansive and elevating. Great choice – easily one of the better records in any genre released in the last few years Certainly belongs on the list proper. Could replace almost anything, as it's so far outside the genre conventions. Pharaoh Sanders is a treasure.

Wow like Brian Eno picked up a sax

I've finally cracked the code of what makes a good Ambient album. Usually with a bad Ambient record, I'd open Spotify and see that I'm still on song 2 after like 24 millennia. This time, I opened Spotify thinking I'm on song 2 and saw that the album was ending in like 3 minutes. Flows like a river. You love to see it. Also nice to see some better jazz representation. Still can't believe we only had 1 John Coltrane album, 1 Mingus and no Pharoah Sanders on the original list.

I dunno whether it's because I'm listening on a rare chilled Sunday morning or whether it's anything else about the music but I really enjoyed Promises. It's supposed to be a dream-like composition and it certainly takes me on a journey; I tend to think that with ambient music or any sort of wordless composition, if you find yourself checking the track listing to figure out where you are and you're much further through than you expected, that's a good thing, and that happened here. Movement 6 is fantastic, Movement 9 is a startling finish; for something like this you might expect everything to build to a stunning crescendo and awaken from the dream-like state energised and content but it seems to just rip you from it and leave you wondering where you are. Sanders' sax cuts through the orchestral arrangements aggressively but also meshes really well when it needs to, and that give and take makes for a pretty rare experience. I think it's a 4/5, it grabbed me a lot more than I thought it would and I liked it a lot.

Loved it, thank you!!

Absolutely beautiful

Amazing. Thank you

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Movement 1

Real nice

Music nerd jazz + electronic collab to play early morning with coffee or late night with a wine and enjoy for the #vibes

So good

While ambient falls just a bit outside of music I listen to regularly, this is obviously an amazing collaboration between Floating Points (Sam Shepherd), Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra. The combination of jazz, electronics, and classical music is brilliant and well-executed. Pharoah Sanders’s performance is more subdued than his earlier, more energetic work, but the soulful, subtle sax is in service of the total sound. I get why it was so widely lauded and appeared on so many end-of-year lists in 2021. The recurring theme is meditative, hypnotic, and calming. And yet, the repetitive nature of the main motif is also its biggest drawback, making the album lose momentum after movement six.

Although there is a heap of talent far surpassing my puny mind behind this I'm honestly not sure there is all that much there. Maybe I'm not refined enough for it, maybe it required more dedicated and active listening. As it was I found it to be just fine.

Been wanting to listen to this one. Love floating points. I know movement 3 is good. 3

I have to be in the right mood for this, which I was, otherwise I might fall asleep.

Perfect music as background in a fancy restaurant or something. Not something I would actively put on again. It sure may be a relaxing moment for some

This was quite relaxing and lovely. I was hoping for a bit more variation musically, but it was a pleasant listen.

If you're into chill symphony music, you may like this.

This felt like a toned down kamasai Washington album. Simple dreamy like structure with great sax melodies. Overall it’s really nice and simple while still being interesting and enjoyable. I’d listen to this again. 6.7/10

Expected a lot from this LP and left disappointed. Combining the ethereal electronic Floating Points is known for with a full orchestra's magnificence seems like an unmistakable win, but the main theme is so piddling and timid that this quickly becomes 45 minutes of slog. Pharaoh Sanders' excellent sax does its best to inject some liveliness, but then feels foreign atop an ultimately banal melody. The composition here is just not good (at least to my taste), and I'm left wondering what could have been if someone had written a melody that dared to get above a meek whisper.

Ambient jazz. As sparse as it gets.

It's fitting that the songs are all called "movements" here, because it was SHIT. 2/5.

Minimalismo. Música clásica leeeeeenta. Rollo. Un 2.

Not my vibe at all I’m afraid. Happy for those that it is, but don’t go putting this on during a road trip or I’ll be putting in AirPods.