Floating Points Albums Ranked — Complete Discography Guide
UK Bass & Electronics · Updated May 2026
Floating Points has released three studio albums — Elaenia (2015), Crush (2019) and Promises (2021) — plus a significant body of EPs and singles. Sam Shepherd's output across Ninja Tune is compact but almost without weak material. Here is every record ranked alongside key pre-album releases.
Floating Points — Ranked
Pre-Album: Shadows EP (2011) and LateNightTales (2019)
The Shadows EP introduced Shepherd's approach before the debut album: complex jazz harmony, live drums, electronic processing. It remains an essential companion to the full albums. The LateNightTales compilation is the best single-volume document of his taste and its influence on his production sensibility.
#3 — Crush (2019) — Ninja Tune
The most club-facing entry in the catalogue — compressed, driving, still harmonically complex but with a directness and physical impact that the debut deliberately avoided. "LesAlpx" is the standout: a polyrhythmic construction that builds through multiple sections without ever losing tension. Crush works in a DJ set in ways that Elaenia and Promises do not; it is the record that established Shepherd as a dance music producer as well as a jazz-inflected composer. Reference track: "LesAlpx".
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#2 — Elaenia (2015) — Ninja Tune
The debut album arrived fully formed: synthesisers, live drums from Tom Skinner and harmonic language drawn from contemporary jazz. The record has no weak tracks and demonstrates a compositional intelligence — in the way themes develop, return and resolve — that studio electronic music rarely achieves. "Silhouettes" and "Thin Air" are the peaks. Elaenia established that the territory Shepherd was working in was his own. Reference track: "Silhouettes".
#1 — Promises (2021) — Ninja Tune
A collaboration with jazz legend Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, and the most significant record in Shepherd's catalogue. Promises is nine movements across 46 minutes — sparse, almost immobile, Sanders's saxophone sitting above Shepherd's minimal keyboard and bass patterns with the LSO providing a harmonic foundation that holds the whole construction together. It is not a jazz record, not an ambient record and not an electronic record: it is something that exists only because Shepherd had developed the language of all three independently before bringing them together. Pitchfork's Album of the Year 2021. Reference track: "Movement 3".
Where to Start
If you know jazz: start with Promises. If you come from club music: start with Crush. For the complete picture in one record: Elaenia gives you the full range of Shepherd's harmonic language in the most accessible format.
Floating Points Merch — Designs from the Catalogue
The Floating Points merch collection draws from the geometric visual language of the Elaenia and Crush eras. DTG printed on ring-spun cotton, dispatched from the UK. Browse the full range →
