Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points releases his highly anticipated new studio album 'Cascade' on Ninja Tune!
'Cascade' is an eruption of unfinished business. In late 2022, Shepherd, known for switching genres as freely as his stage name suggests, found himself in the California desert working on something new. 'Mere Mortals', his first ballet score created in collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet, was intended to be a collision of sound and dance exploring the ancient parable of Pandora through the prism of technology. On 'Promises', his previous album released in 2021, he swapped his trademark modular synth carpets and intricate drum patterns for airy dreamscapes developed with legendary saxophonist, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra. This collaboration was so popular that a Mercury Prize nomination and a sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2023 followed. Between these projects and an upcoming anime score for Adult Swim, from the outside it might seem like Shepherd was leaving the dance floor forever. But while he was writing his ballet music by day, at night he longed for the sweaty community of a dance floor. For the pulsing carefreeness of electronic music. In November 2019, Shepherd released his critically acclaimed second studio album, 'Crush'. 'Cascade' was conceived as a follow-up to 'Crush', giving the album (and audience) the opportunity to experience Floating Points once again in its traditional form on a dance floor: full of Buchla rhythms, glitchy melodies that enchant a room full of heaving bodies. The nine songs are allowed to smolder and spark for up to eight minutes at a time, allowing for a more expansive exploration of sounds and grooves than before. Nearly a decade after his highly acclaimed debut album, 'Elaenia', the composer has found ways to seamlessly incorporate his experiments outside of club music into his music designed for the dancefloor.
