In 2014, Sam Shepherd wrote a career-defining tune in a matter of minutes. “Nuits Sonores” was finished on a flight to the Lyon festival of the same name, and it sounds as effortless as it apparently was, climbing towards the heavens without boiling over into excess. This is one of Shepherd’s two main modes—when he’s not a jazz auteur, he’s a crack house and techno producer. (He also has a PhD in neuroscience and is a revered and adventurous selector behind the decks.) That other side has won him fame from all corners of the music industry, culminating in Promises, his 2021 collaboration with Pharoah Sanders. More recently, he’s been taking to huge festival stages with crossover DJs like Caribou and Four Tet, following them in their quests to infiltrate the mainstream on their own terms. All those parts of Floating Points are connected, but not always obviously. Enter Cascade, an album that bolsters Shepherd’s club cunning with his musical chops in service of one single-minded mission: blissing out on the dance floor.
The rollout for Cascade started back in 2022 with “Vocoder,” an industrial-strength anthem to file alongside “Nuits Sonores” and 2019’s “LesAlpx.” “Vocoder (Club Mix)” opens the album in a boisterous rush, careening toward a breakdown of clipped vocal samples that spill out like a cargo of french fries from a turned-over semi. It’s nearly reckless by Floating Points standards, capturing that feeling when the strobes hit hard and you can’t tell if the lights are getting to you or you’re just more faded than you thought.
The raucous album is a direct sequel to 2019’s aggressive Crush. On that record, Shepherd showcased his newfound mastery of modular synthesis, creating cresting waves of fuzz and distortion that bore down on fitful rhythms and unpredictable song structures—the result, he said, of opening huge venues for the xx and wanting to challenge the audience with “chaotic” music. This time he’s focused on making people move instead of befuddling them. Cascade is what happened when Shepherd wasn’t able to tour at all, an exorcism of dancefloor impulses impeded by the pandemic and then nurtured by the return of DJ gigs. In the midst of recording it, he decamped to the Southern California desert to write the score for a ballet, which makes Cascade a holiday and a reckoning all in one.
These tracks redirect the jazzy vamp of classic records like Shadows into zig-zagging journeys, like those ’90s screen-saver mazes. The approach peaks with centerpiece “Fast Forward,” where jittery synth leads wrap around each other like a hissing Medusa head of countermelodies and surging textures. The melodies decay and detune in real time, highlighting Shepherd’s handiwork—electronic music you can practically hear breathing, growing, and dying. “Afflecks Palace” takes this idea and throws a swirl of conflicting emotions at it. A nostalgic trip through early IDM, acid house, and jungle, it’s wiry and unpredictable, held together with a thin thread thanks to Shepherd’s now considerable experience making this kind of stuff on the fly.
