Competition: Win Floating Points' Shadow EP

As Floating Points, Sam Shepherd makes music that defies classification, even if you don’t think literally in terms of linear genres. He’s already proved himself to be a superbly talented musician, scoring all the music for the Floating Points Ensemble project, a 16 piece mini-orchestra whose debut EP was recorded in the BBC’s legendary Maida Vale Studios; but alongside the intrinsic dancefloor bump of his drum work that’s evident across his solo material (from the breakthrough ‘Vacuum Boogie’ all the way to his latest material), Shepherd injects a serenely warm level of melody into his music.

It’s become something of his trademark; without there being any real thing you can trademark. I guess it’s more just a seal of quality given the multifarious directions he can take his compositions - he’s gloriously unpredictable. Spiritually strong, he seems to channel the work of worldly composers; taking his cue points more from foreign jazz records and unassuming, outrageously illustrated albums that are populated with densely woven instrumental scores than the current producers de jour. Even on ‘Obfuse’, a track taken from his latest ‘Shadows EP’, where he literally plays with 808s, tumbling the drum sounds around each other for the hell of it, he’s using the same tools as a lot of dudes out there are using, but he brings an air of playful intensity to it with his chord lines. Plus, in cutting the piece dead before it really ever takes off, you could infer that Shepherd is wholly content to just let you know that he can do that style, without having to really underline his point by building it into one of his sprawling 9 minute odysseys.



An odyssey in point is ‘ARP3’, one of the stand out cuts taken from the ‘Shadows EP’. It’s engrained with Shepherd’s overtly musical sensibilities. Positively driven by the little delayed piano motifs and a heightened sense of drama, he makes such a point out of that fart like bass sound that all his subtle timbre phrasing gets eclipsed when it announces itself on top of the beat. It displays a real knowledge of how something can work on a dancefloor, with him using that charismatic bass tone to root the movement of the dance, capturing attention and giving him the opportunity to take the things somewhere wildly different with the tunes that could follow it.

Simply put, Floating Points music is rich in detail and in texture. Shepherd’s love of analogue equipment and experimental software has been documented before (in the liner notes of the gatefold version of ‘Shadows’ he gives thanks to “Oberheim Electronics, Buchla & Associates, ARP instruments, Roland, Cycling 74, Rhodes Instruments & API” as much as he does personal friends or colleagues) but on the 8th March he’ll be exploring the capabilities of these very things in the comfort of Room One. Celebrating his Eglo label’s 3rd Birthday he’ll be debuting a new live show, something that his label partner Alexander Nut recently described simply as “crazy stuff”.

“This isn't someone messing about on a laptop,” Nut embellished. “This is real 808s and analog synths mixed with samplers and software he's written himself. I don't know how one guy can control it all; it's about as live as live gets.”



In anticipation of the gig, we’ve been blessed with two copies of Floating Points’ ‘Shadows EP’ in all its heavyweight gatefold glory to give away to two lucky readers. Displaying the artwork of collaborator Will Hurt, the physical product is a beautiful thing: matt black it’s speckled with colour across a cubic splatter. In an attempt to match Eglo’s generous gesture we’ve added a pair of tickets for each winner into the prize pot.

So, to win a pair of tickets to Eglo’s 3rd Birthday on the 8th March AND a copy of Floating Points’ ‘Shadows EP’ on vinyl simply email us the answer to the following question by the 1st March...

Q: Name the first release Floating Points put out on Eglo?

Winners will be notified by email. Please ensure you can attend the event before entering.