FLOATING POINTS

Neuroscientist, DJ, composer, musician—Sam Shepherd, better known as Floating Points, is the kind of artist who refuses to fit neatly into a single category. We’ve been following his journey for years, and with every new release he finds another way to surprise us, moving effortlessly between ambient, jazz, glitchy electronics, and the more dancefloor-driven edges of techno.

His upcoming album, Mere Mortals, out on August 28, is a score written for a ballet inspired by the myth of Pandora, performed by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. It’s yet another reminder that, for Floating Points, curiosity has always mattered more than convention.

Trying to predict what a Floating Points live set will sound like is beside the point. The only thing to do is wait for the lights to go down, let the music unfold, and lose yourself in the collision of sounds, textures, and ideas—where nothing is ever quite what you expect. We can’t wait.