Floating Points
Sam Shepherd, known by his artist name Floating Points, is used to making music that springs bodies into movement. Since 2008, the revered composer-producer has been sparking rapturous fits of dance worldwide; to go to a Floating Points show is to enter a joyous, sweaty communion of heaving bodies and shuffling feet, inspired by his mesmeric, genre-colliding rhythms.
The musician - also a doctor of neuroscience - is regarded a UK club treasure, known for work that let plenty of other influences spill onto the dancefloor. First, there'd been his "soaring, beautiful electronic jazz journey" of a debut album, to quote The Guardian (2015's Elaenia). A genre-blending revelation of a second LP followed in 2019 (Crush). Then, in 2021, arrived Promises, a collaboration with jazz great Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra that led to a Mercury Prize nomination, with a sell-out show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to follow.
In 2024, Shepherd debuted Mere Mortals at the San Francisco Ballet - a musical retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Pandora, accompanied by stunning choreography from Aszure Barton. All elegiac strings, apocalyptic brass and pulsing electronics, it's Floating Points as you've never, ever heard him before. His 2024 album Cascade - a tribute to the landmarks of his early days in Manchester suburb Bolton, falling in love with thumping beats and the heady thrills of dance music - proved that the producer may never fully depart the club lands in which he made his name. But more than ever, it feels like Sam Shepherd could go anywhere; his music to spring bodies into movement more boundless than ever before.
