Floating Points shares new single ‘Ocotillo’

22.08.2024

FLOATING POINTS SHARES VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE ‘OCOTILLO’

ALONGSIDE ALIVE PAINTING BY AKIKO NAKAYAMA

NEW ALBUM CASCADE OUT 13 SEPTEMBER VIA NINJA TUNE

“The UK master returns”
Resident Advisor

“A moment of pure immediacy”
Clash

“It’s quite something how Floating Points can make a techno track whack so hard yet dazzle with so much melody”
Loud and Quiet ‘Track of the Week’

“Pure pleasure with an experimental edge”
8/10 Uncut

“The Mercury prize-nominated polymath scratches his dancefloor itch”
4/5 Mojo

“‘Key103’ is the perfect super-sub, seven heady minutes of techno euphoria, an intricate layering of beats and arpeggiated synths”
The New Cue

“The throbbing synthesisers and no-nonsense drums of ‘Key103’ show a man itching to get back into the DJ booth”
GQ ‘The Best Albums of 2024 (so far)’

Watch the Alive Painting for ‘Ocotillo’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Dr-qwWEqk

Last month Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points announced that his new album Cascade will be released on 13 September via Ninja Tune. Along with the announcement Shepherd shared lead single ‘Key103‘. He has today followed up with new single ‘Ocotillo’ alongside an Alive Painting by Akiko Nakayama continuing his ongoing collaboration with the Tokyo-based artist. Taking a slightly different approach to previously shared singles from the album, the track opens with harp from Miriam Adefris – who Shepherd first collaborated with on Mere Mortals, his first ballet score for the San Francisco Ballet – and the gentle resonance of a clavichord Shepherd inherited from his great aunt, before rumbling into a thrilling dancefloor conclusion.

Shepherd recently performed at We Out Here Festival as well as playing a sweaty, packed out Boiler Room show in New York. This weekend he will play London‘s All Points East and Lost Village, Lincolnshire with more dates to be announced soon, all with long-time collaborators Hamill Industries working alongside Akiko Nakayama delivering enthralling live visuals at each. Read more on that in Nakayama’s recent interview with Creative Review here.

Cascade is an eruption of unfinished business. In late 2022, Shepherd – renowned for drifting between genres as freely as his stage name implies – found himself in the Californian desert working on something new. Mere Mortals was to be a collision of sound and dance exploring the ancient parable of Pandora through the prism of technology, the ballet went on to sell out every night of its multiple runs. 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 dancefloor for good. But as he wrote his ballet score by day, at night he found himself longing for the sweaty communion of a dancefloor. For the pulse-racing abandon of electronic music. Cascade was devised as a follow-on from Crush – his rave-reviewed second studio album – 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. Further getting back to the roots of Floating Points, Cascade is also record forged in an adolescence spent in Manchester’s clubs and record shops, discovering for the first time the mind-expanding (and emotion-purging) power of electronic music in all its forms.

Pre-order Cascade here:
https://floatingpoints.lnk.to/cascadePR

Photo credit: Genevieve Reeves

High-res images are available here

Cascade tracklist:

1. Vocoder (Club Mix)
2. Key103
3. Birth4000
4. Del Oro
5. Fast Forward
6. Ocotillo
7. Afflecks Palace
8. Tilt Shift
9. Ablaze

Tour dates:

23 Aug – London @ All Points East
24 Aug – Lincoln @ Lost Village Festival
31 Aug – Bristol @ Forwards Festival
20 Sep – Philadelphia, PA Making Time
21 Sep – Los Angeles, CA @ Boiler Room SOLD OUT
27 Sep – San Francisco, CA @ 888 Garage (Portola Pre-Party)
28 Sep – San Francisco, CA @ Portola Festival
29 Sep – Chicago, IL @ Warm Love Cool Dreams
5 Oct – Arcosanti, AZ @ Form
12 Oct – Lake Perris, CA @ Desert Daze

16 Oct – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg / ADE SOLD OUT
25 Oct – Manchester @ Warehouse Project w/ Disclosure (DJ Set) SOLD OUT

15 Nov – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
16 Nov – Paris, FR @ Le Nef 104

28 Nov – Berlin, DE @ Festsaal Kreuzberg (1900-2300)
29 Nov – Berlin, DE @ Festsaal Kreuzberg (2330-0400)

Tickets are available here:
https://www.floatingpoints.co.uk/#tour