Floating Points (a.k.a. Manchester's Sam Shepherd) has announced a new album called Cascade arriving on September 13 via Ninja Tune. Alongside the announcement, Shepherd has also shared lead single "Key103," which comes attached to a video with longtime collaborator Akiko Nakayama.
In a statement about the record, Cascade is described as "an eruption of unfinished business." In late 2022, Shepherd found himself in the Californian desert working on Mere Mortals, his first ballet score, created in collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet.
This excursion away from the dancefloor — a trend in Shepherd's recent work also reflected in 2021's Pharoah Sanders collaboration Promises — ultimately led him back to it. At night, Shepherd "found himself longing for the sweaty communion of a dance floor. For the pulse-racing abandon of electronic music."
"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," Shepherd said in a statement about Cascade. And, despite its desert origins, the album was ultimately inspired by his hometown of Manchester.
"There's something about Manchester that keeps coming back to me, and I think it's partly to do with its record shops. 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 continued. "I'm sure I was a total pain in the arse constantly pulling records off the shelves, 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."
Check out the video for "Key103," plus the Cascade tracklist, below.
Cascade:
1. Vocoder (Club Mix)
2. Key103
3. Birth4000
4. Del Oro
5. Fast Forward
6. Ocotillo
7. Afflecks Palace
8. Tilt Shift
9. Ablaze