Head Trip and Floating Points Announce Sunflower Sound System US Debut - Four Tet, Ben UFO, Avalon Emerson, Eris Drew & Octo Octa, Theo Parrish + More

Today, Head Trip and Floating Points have announced the artist lineup for the US debut of Sunflower Sound System, taking place during the one time only event this October 10-11 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Running throughout the weekend, Sunflower will bring together some of the world’s most celebrated selectors, producers, and sonic innovators for a dancefloor experience built around the power, clarity, and physicality of exceptional sound.

Designed by Floating Points, aka Sam Shepherd, Sunflower Sound System is a custom-built hi-fi environment that Shepherd spent more than a decade dreaming about and developing. At Head Trip, the system will take shape inside an acoustically treated and paneled dome, with 10 custom speaker stacks arranged in a circle around the audience to create an enveloping, surround-sound listening experience. The environment will be further transformed through tapestries and original artwork commissioned from DJ and artist Josephine Chime, alongside the debut of the “Cosmosphere,” a giant mechanical mirrorball designed to bloom above the room as the music builds.

All weekend long, Sunflower’s programming will bring together artists whose approaches to DJing, sound, and record culture reflect the sonic breadth the system was built to encourage. Joining Floating Points will be Avalon Emerson, the acclaimed DJ and producer whose expansive sets move fluidly across eras and genres, Hessle Audio co-founder Ben UFO, and Eris Drew & Octo Octa, the partners whose joyful, deeply physical approach to DJing is rooted in the transformative possibilities of the dancefloor. Also slated to perform is longtime Floating Points collaborator and fellow sonic explorer Four Tet, pioneering dub producer and engineer Mad Professor, Detroit’s Theo Parrish - the Sound Signature founder revered for sprawling sets that draw freely from house, soul, jazz, funk, disco and the wider continuum of Black music - and Emmy-nominated music supervisor and curator Zach Cowie to round out the weekend. Programming will run from 3:00pm-12:30am on Saturday and 3:00pm-11:30pm on Sunday.

Speaking on the US debut of Sunflower Sound System at Head Trip, Sam says, “I’m so psyched to bring the system to Head Trip - a lot of the inspiration for the design of the system started with hifi and PA companies founded in CA over 75 years ago and it’s an honour to host some jams in the desert with the Sunflower! We have a sweet lineup of DJs to share music with yall, and we’ve even made some tweaks to the system such as brand new flying tweeter arrays and infill speakers to help with the dispersion. The system is a labour of love and it’s constantly being monitored by our engineers who will be tweaking things as we go. We’ve made a giant mechanical mirrorball ‘Cosmosphere’ which blooms when the jam is really going and tapestries from Josephine!”

Sunflower Sound System is the latest expression of a career that has consistently pushed Floating Points beyond the boundaries of any single musical world. A producer, composer, DJ, and musician with a PhD in neuroscience, Shepherd has moved between dancefloors, concert halls and multidisciplinary arts spaces throughout his career. His landmark 2021 album Promises, created with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, brought electronic composition, spiritual jazz, and orchestral music into conversation, culminating in an unforgettable live presentation at the Hollywood Bowl. More recently, Shepherd composed Mere Mortals, his first full-length ballet score, commissioned by San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo with choreography by Aszure Barton and design and visuals by Hamill Industries.

Inspired by the myth of Pandora, Mere Mortals combines orchestral composition and electronics and has since expanded from its San Francisco premiere into performances in Edinburgh and London, with Shepherd performing alongside orchestras including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Sunflower extends that same restless approach into physical space, turning Shepherd’s longstanding fascination with sound, engineering, and collective listening into an environment audiences can step inside.

Goldenvoice’s Head Trip takes place October 10-11, at the Empire Polo Club. Built around a single main stage with no overlapping performances, Saturday’s wider lineup features Calvin Harris, FISHER Chris Lake: Under Construction, Peggy Gou B2B Four Tet, and Seth Troxler B2B Ben Sterling. Sunday features Swedish House Mafia, Skrillex, Dom Dolla B2B KETTAMA, The Blessed Madonna, and DJ Harvey.

ABOUT GOLDENVOICE 
Goldenvoice, creators of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and Stagecoach: California’s Country Music Festival, operates successful Los Angeles and Bay Area music venues including the Fonda Theatre, The Roxy Theatre, El Rey Theatre, The Novo, Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall, The Regency Ballroom and The Warfield. Goldenvoice holds exclusive booking deals at Brookside at The Rose Bowl, Santa Barbara Bowl, Mountain Winery, Great American Music Hall and Frost Amphitheatre. They also have produced events such as Desert Trip, Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, Day N Vegas, Just Like Heaven, Porter Robinson’s Second Sky Festival, Portola, and many more. Beginning as an independent punk rock promoter in the early 1980s, Goldenvoice grew to be the preeminent alternative promoter in Southern California by forging strong relationships with both bands and music fans. Currently, Goldenvoice promotes over 1,600 concerts a year in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Alaska and Canada plus recently adding North American tours to their growing list of accomplishments. For additional info, please visit www.Goldenvoice.com.

ABOUT FLOATING POINTS
Sam Shepherd is used to making music that springs bodies into movement. Since 2008, the revered composer-producer has been sparking rapturous fits of dance worldwide; to go to a Floating Points show is to enter a joyous, sweaty communion of heaving bodies and shuffling feet, inspired by his mesmeric, genre-colliding rhythms.

The musician – also a doctor of neuroscience – regarded a UK club treasure, known for work that let plenty of other influences spill onto the dancefloor. First, there’d been his “soaring, beautiful electronic jazz journey” of a debut album, to quote The Guardian (2015’s Elaenia). A genre-blending revelation of a second LP followed in 2019 (Crush). Then, in 2021, arrived Promises, a collaboration with jazz great Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra that led to a Mercury Prize nomination, with a sell-out show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to follow.

What happens next? Where does Floating Points go from here? His 2024 album Cascade – a tribute to the landmarks of his early days in Manchester suburb Bolton, falling in love with thumping beats and the heady thrills of dance music – proved that the producer may never fully depart the club lands in which he made his name. But more than ever, after the dizzyingly explorative Mere Mortals, it feels like Sam Shepherd could go anywhere; his music to spring bodies into movement more boundless than ever before.