Album out now: Floating Points "Mere Mortals"

Mere Mortals, a stunning new album from the genre-defying Floating Points, aka Sam Shepherd, comes out in all formats on Deutsche Grammophon today. The release coincides with the much-anticipated European premiere of Mere Mortals, which San Francisco Ballet will give at the Edinburgh International Festival tonight (9pm CEST). Shepherd will be performing live with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Commissioned and directed by the San Francisco Ballet’s Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, with choreography by Aszure Barton and design and visuals by Hamill Industries, the ballet is a fusion of myth, music and movement. Its world premiere, featuring Shepherd with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, with whom he also recorded the 14-track album, took place in 2024.

“Shepherd’s music constantly arrests the ear with new textures and effects, but builds to them carefully, with a film composer’s ear for lyricism and a sculptor’s sense of form. It’s an absolute aural roller coaster” – San Francisco Chronicle, January 2024

Inspired by the ancient tale of Pandora – who inadvertently unleashed evil into the world – Floating Points has reimagined her story for the modern age, his score a potent mix of elegiac strings, apocalyptic brass and pulsing electronics.

“The whole album explores the myth of Pandora, but if you look at how her story was translated over time, she was completely stripped of her agency and kindness. Pandora’s not about bringing hell to Earth. She really represents curiosity and change.” – Floating Points / Sam Shepherd.

The lyrical solo violin in Hope (Cordula Merks) contrasts with the dissonance and pummelling percussion of Rage of the Gods, for example, while the exquisite harp melody in Her Gift offers a moment’s reflection before the eeriness of Opening of the Jar augurs disaster.

The ballet gives the myth a new ending, referencing climate crisis – Hope flies free from Pandora’s jar, but can only circle a planet reduced to ash. “My favourite part of the whole process was writing Nowhere to Land,” says Shepherd. “When I heard the music I’d written on the page transformed by Cordula’s exquisite violin-playing it made me excited to write more in the future!”

After today’s premiere, he appears live in further performances in Edinburgh (29/30 August) and in London, when the production transfers to Sadler’s Wells Theatre (9-12 September, with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia).