Floating Points

Floating Points is the working name of Sam Shepherd, and it has stretched a long way from its origins as a London club producer's alias. The same musician has made broken-beat and house 12-inches, an orchestral collaboration with Pharoah Sanders that was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, a ballet score, and a hand-built festival sound system. What links all of it is a fixation on how music sounds in a room.

Early Life and Path Into Music

Samuel Thomas Shepherd was born in 1986 and raised in Manchester, according to Wikipedia and the MusicBrainz entry for the artist. As a boy he was a chorister at Manchester Cathedral and went on to study piano at Chetham's School of Music, as he told The Guardian in 2015. The same interview describes a vicarage childhood that doubled as a studio for experiments, and a teacher who handed him jazz records, after which he stopped treating classical and jazz as separate worlds.

He moved to London to study for a PhD in neuroscience and epigenetics at University College London, with research on pain responses that produced published academic papers. The Guardian describes how his appetite for records became serious during those years: he spent his student loan on US digging trips and learned to DJ from watching the owners of Peabody Records in Chicago run all-day sessions. In the late 2000s he was also working as a DJ at Plastic People, the Shoreditch basement that the same interview credits, along with friends Four Tet and Caribou, as the model for an idealistic, sound-first approach to club culture.

Sound and Style

Shepherd's music resists a single label. The Guardian's 2015 profile describes productions that distil spiritual jazz, classical, soul and broken-beat influences into lively house and techno shufflers, while the live Floating Points Ensemble, a 16-piece group that won a Best BBC Radio 1 Maida Vale Session award, pointed toward a more compositional side. Among his stated influences, according to Wikipedia, are Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen and Bill Evans. In 2015 he told The Guardian he admired spiritual jazz architecturally, as a way of building a whole space out of nothing, and that he wanted to make music listeners could enter without prior reference points.

The records follow that logic. Elaenia (2015) layers strings, piano, drones and synthesizers into suites, and Shepherd cited Talk Talk's Laughing Stock as the record that taught him the music cannot be separated from the recording. Crush followed in 2019, and Cascade (2024), on Ninja Tune, was recorded in studios in London and California, according to Wikipedia's album article.

Labels and Releases

Shepherd and Alexander Nut launched the label Eglo Records in late 2008, and his first release, the Vacuum EP, appeared there. Eglo went on to release Fatima, Funkineven, Steve Spacek and Shy One among others, per Wikipedia. In 2015 he founded his own imprint, Pluto, which has released Elaenia, Kuiper, Crush and Reflections: Mojave Desert. Elsewhere he has released through Planet Mu, Luaka Bop, Ninja Tune and Deutsche Grammophon.

Reflections: Mojave Desert (2017) is a good example of his method. It was recorded in the desert in August 2016 while he and his band rehearsed for a US tour, using the way sound bounced off rocks as a recording environment, with a short film by long-time collaborator Anna Diaz Ortuno of Hamill Industries.

Career Highlights

The big breakthrough was Elaenia, which Metacritic scored 85 from 20 reviews. It also set up Promises, the 2021 collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. Sanders had been impressed by Elaenia in 2015, and after befriending Shepherd proposed they make a record together, according to Wikipedia's Promises article. It is a single 46-minute composition in nine movements, was released on Luaka Bop on 26 March 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Mercury Prize. After Sanders died in 2022, Shepherd staged a one-off performance of the piece at the Hollywood Bowl.

Since then he has written for the screen and stage. His score for the San Francisco Ballet's Mere Mortals premiered on 26 January 2024, and the studio recording was released in 2026 on Deutsche Grammophon, as the official site shows. Alongside Kamasi Washington and Bonobo he also composed music for the anime series Lazarus, which won Best Original Score for Animation at the Music Awards Japan in June 2026, per Wikipedia.

Sunflower and the Sound System

The most club-relevant chapter is Sunflower, the sound system Shepherd built with designer Carlos Figueroa (fig. G). MusicTech reported in April 2025 that it draws on the system at the Leeds night Cosmic Slop and the work of the New York company SBS Slammer, and quoted Shepherd saying he needed to "build the room I want to play in". Resident Advisor reported that he would first test it at Project House in Leeds on 8 September 2024. We follow its festival run, including Dekmantel and Head Trip in California, in our piece on hi-fi sound systems in festival lineups.

Shepherd has also kept a place on the festival circuit as a DJ. He was on the farewell lineup of Bloc in March 2016, alongside Four Tet, Jeff Mills and Carl Craig, which we cover in the story of Bloc's return. The Guardian names Four Tet and Caribou as his close friends and kindred spirits, and recounts a six-hour Berghain booking in 2015 where he played Pharoah Sanders' 20-minute "Harvest Time" in full. For more on the club itself, see our Berghain explainer.

FAQ

Who is Floating Points?

Floating Points is the professional name of Sam Shepherd, a British producer, DJ and composer from Manchester. He founded the label Pluto, co-founded Eglo Records, and is known for the albums Elaenia, Crush, Promises and Cascade.

How old is Floating Points?

Sam Shepherd was born in 1986, which makes him 39 or 40 depending on his birthday (age 39 or 40 as of October 2026). His exact birth date is not published in the sources we checked.

Where is Floating Points from?

Floating Points is British. He was raised in Manchester, where he sang as a chorister at Manchester Cathedral, and later moved to London to study neuroscience at University College London.

What genre does Floating Points play?

His music crosses electronica, house, broken beat, jazz and contemporary classical. The Guardian describes his DJ sets as brainy but banging, while his albums are more compositional.

What is Floating Points' real name?

His real name is Samuel Thomas Shepherd, and he is usually credited as Sam Shepherd.

What is the Promises album by Floating Points?

Promises is a 2021 collaboration with the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. It is one 46-minute piece in nine movements, released on Luaka Bop, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Mercury Prize.

What is the Sunflower sound system?

Sunflower is a custom sound system Shepherd designed with Carlos Figueroa (fig. G). It debuted at Project House in Leeds on 8 September 2024 and has since appeared at festivals including Dekmantel in 2025.

Was Floating Points a scientist?

Yes. Shepherd holds a PhD in neuroscience and epigenetics from University College London, where his research focused on pain responses, before music became his full-time career.

festivals

• Kappa FuturFestivalTurin, 2-4 JUL 2027→
• NachtdigitalLeipzig, 30 JUL 2027 - 01 AUG 2027→
• Love InternationalTisno, 7-13 JUL 2027→

Past appearances and announced lineups only, each checked against the festival's own records.

related on rts.fm

• Why Festivals Now Book Hi-Fi Sound Systems Like Despacio→
• Bloc Reunion 2027: Lineup, Date and the Full Story→