Floating Points

In the late 2000s, Sam Shepherd’s earliest work under the Floating Points alias gave new life to classic strains of garage and boogie, slotting them into the bass-heavy matrix of the UK’s post-dubstep club scene. But since then, the Manchester native, born in 1986, has expanded his vision with every release. He’s explored jazzy electronic fusion on 2015’s Elaenia, prog and post-rock on 2017’s Reflections – Mojave Desert soundtrack, and on 2019’s Crush, a wide range of muscular modular synth jams that reflect the types of records he frequently DJs alongside his friends Caribou and Four Tet. Among his most ambitious work is 2021’s Promises, an album-length collaboration with saxophone legend Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra that spins his instinctive feel for texture and tone color into a vast tapestry of ambient jazz.