MUMBAI: Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has shared a new single, “Problems” which is out now via Ninja Tune.
The new track is a follow up to previously-released singles “Vocoder” and “Grammar”, and marks another pivotal point in a career defined by them and follow up of the release of ‘Promises’, last year’s celebrated album composed by Shepherd and recorded alongside Pharoah Sanders & the London Symphony Orchestra.
Remaining worlds away from ‘Promises’, “Problems” takes a different approach from this years’ previous singles showcasing a thrilling and expertly realised side to Floating Points that sounds like nothing he’s ever done before.
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Ongoing collaborators Hamill Industries continue their work with Floating Points in the video for “Problems”. Building on the ideas of movement and the intricate interactions of electrical pulses introduced in the visuals for “Vocoder” and “Grammar”, “Problems” steps things up a notch. Using a technique called Vector Rescanning, they transform video into sound and turn it into a vector image, all in real-time. They filmed the dancers, Hannah Ekholm and Jal Joshua, and transformed their movements into sounds, which they were able to tangle and morph with different sonic elements of Floating Points’ music. From the resulting sound, a final image was projected into a custom-modified Vectrex system, an 80’s video game console that projects vector images onto a screen.
“‘Problems’ is meant to agitate every single room that its ecstatic sound waves reach,” Hamill Industries share. “We wanted to celebrate it with movement and dance and reshape it through sound, by using techniques that allow the sonification of images. We have used lasers that spin and move with the music, making visible their sinuous shapes. It was important that this video shaped the electrical feeling you get when being on a dancefloor, the urge of dancing when sound waves reach your ears.”
Known for his complex and progressive electronic compositions, Floating Points serves up a cerebral yet driving sound that draws from house, techno, jazz, soul and classical music to give the crowd a full mind and body workout on the dance floor.
‘Promises’ topped end of year lists everywhere including #1 spots from The Guardian (Contemporary), Mojo, The Vinyl Factory, TIME Magazine, The New York Times (Jazz) and more. “Vocoder” and “Grammar” were met with widespread praise including a Best New Track from Pitchfork and a glowing review from Resident Advisor describing Shepherd as “one of electronic music’s undisputed MVPs.”
No stranger to global-acclaim and with over 100 million accumulated streams under his belt, Floating Points was named Pitchfork’s Best New Music and Resident Advisors’ Album of the Year–and went from dance floors to festival stages worldwide including Laneway Festival Singapore, Wonderfruit (Thailand) and Sónar Hong Kong Festival.
