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The new album from acclaimed British producer Sam Shepherd, Cascade, is a continuation of sorts. In late 2022, the composer – renowned for drifting between genres as freely as his stage name, Floating Points, implies – found himself in the Californian desert working on something new. Mere Mortals, his first ballet score, created with the San Francisco Ballet, was to be a collision of sound and dance exploring the ancient parable of Pandora through the prism of technology. “It was one of quite a few left turns I was taking around that time,” recalls Shepherd, who can say that again: Promises, his multiple end-of-year-list-topping previous record, released in 2021, had seen him swap his typical modular synth tapestries and intricate drum patterns for airy dreamscapes, crafted with late legendary saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. It was a collaboration so popular, a Mercury Prize nomination and sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2023 followed. Between these projects and an upcoming anime score for Adult Swim, from the outside it might have seemed as though Shepherd was departing the dance floor for good. But as he wrote his ballet score by day, at night he found himself longing for the sweaty communion of the club; for the pulse-racing abandon of electronic music once more.
Shepherd had released Crush, his rave-reviewed second studio album, in November 2019. It was hailed as one of the albums of that year by Pitchfork, The Independent, Mixmag, Loud And Quiet and more – “but I never got to explore its ravey, experimental side live,” laments the musician, whose world tour was cancelled by lockdown. Cascade was devised as a follow-on from Crush that would allow him (and audiences) to experience Floating Points in its traditional form on a dancefloor once more: bursting with Buchla rhythms, glitching melodies bewitching a room full of heaving bodies. “It’s meant to be kind of a continuation,” adds Shepherd. This explains Cascade’s artwork: another colourful sleeve, full of fluid imagery (created once more by Tokyo-based artist Akiko Nakayama, renowned for her “Alive” paintings). It also explains its evocative title: like Crush, one word that implies movement, beauty and pressure. Most importantly, it explains its mesmerising sound: sumptuous sonic chasms to lose yourself in again and again..
Creating the album stripped Shepherd back. Not only in terms of his set-up – “I have a studio at home with all the gear I usually use, but I wasn’t there so I had to use my laptop, doing it all on headphones,” he says – but in terms of his connection to electronic music, and to his home city where his love of music first flourished. “There’s something about Manchester that keeps coming back to me, and I think it’s partly to do with its record shops,” says the producer, who found himself instinctively naming tracks after local landmarks and institutions. “As a kid, my school was around the corner from the Northern Quarter so at lunchtimes, I’d run out of the school gates and skip lunch altogether to go and listen to records.” He jokes that he’s sure he was “a total pain in the arse” for the shop staff, “but it was amazing. I’d be listening to Autechre at Pelican Neck, Dilla at Fat City, David Morales mixes at the Factory Records shop… It gave me a parallel education in music to what I was being taught at school.”
The result of that rebellion? Songs like ‘Afflecks Palace,’ an enveloping glide of harp melodies overtaken by otherworldly bleeps and beeps, named after a Mancunian market described as an “emporium of eclecticism.” Elsewhere on Cascade, there’s ‘Key103’, named after “an underground Manchester radio station I’d listen to religiously” that helped expand his music sensibilities beyond the classical composers he focused on in his academic work (Shepherd studied composition at Chetham’s School of Music). Other tracks, like the hypnotic ‘Del Oro’ (named after the street he was staying on in the Californian desert) and ‘Ocotillo’ (named after a cactus-like plant in bloom during his stay) took inspiration from his dust bowl surroundings, but make no mistake: Cascade is a record forged in an adolescence spent in Manchester, discovering the mind-expanding (and emotion-purging) power of electronic music in all its forms.
Though devised as a continuation of Crush, Cascade nonetheless pushes Floating Points’ sound forward into new places. The nine songs here are allowed to smoulder and spark for up to eight minutes at a time, allowing for more expansive exploration of sounds and grooves than before. And when the ambient experimentation of ‘Ablaze’ begins to draw the album to a close, it’s clear that those “left turns” Shepherd spoke of preceding this album have left their mark on him. Almost a decade on since Elaenia, his revered debut album, the composer has discovered ways to thread his experiments outside of club music seamlessly into his music designed for the dancefloor.
“I’m just constantly chasing challenges,” says Shepherd, explaining how this album fits into his ever-expanding web of creative projects, of which there are many. After the huge success of Mere Mortals, which sold out each night of its multiple runs, he’s now writing film scores and building a sound system that he hopes to soon take on the road, all around preparations for a busy festival season (appearances at Fuji Rock and All Points East await, with live visuals by long-time collaborators Hamill Industries working alongside Akiko Nakayama delivering enthralling visuals at each). “I always want to keep things moving and go all in on things that excite me. Whether that’s working with a 100-piece orchestra on a ballet or on a laptop on my own,” Shepherd grins. Cascade is the proof – when it comes to electronic innovation and simmering tracks that stand hairs on end, Floating Points will always, always have unfinished business.
