Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points recently returned from his space jazz odyssey with Pharoah Sanders to re-inhabit his original stomping ground of the dancefloor with the essential single “Vocoder”. Giving no hints as to what he’s up to in the long-run (album? singles series?), he’s now followed that up with another peak-hour floor packer called “Grammar”.
Belying the stuffy title, “Grammar” is a skeletal techno track centred around a stiff-yet-groove-inducing beat that’ll get you moving immediately. Shepherd adorns it with minimal melodic additions, but they’re perfectly chosen and placed to turn this into a subtly but engrossingly evolving piece. Across the song’s eight minutes, tones appear and flutter away; minute digital blips cling to the beat, vocal samples whispering from one side and silken blankets of synth encroaching from the other. By the time of the song’s conclusion, you feel like you’ve been transported – but remained in the same place; this is a journey of the mind as much as the body.
Listen to “Grammar” below or on streaming platforms.
“Grammar” is out on Ninja Tune. You can find Floating Points on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
You can expect to hear these new singles played out at these DJ dates:
9 Apr – Lisbon, ES @ Sonar
14 Apr – Las Vegas, US @ Downtown Las Vegas Events Centre (W/ Flume)
16 Apr – Indio, US @ Coachella
23 Apr – Indio, US @ Coachella
13 May – Berlin, DE @ Funkhaus
28 May – London @ Wide Awake Festival
04 Jun – Marseille, FR @ Le Bon Air
05 Jun – Dublin, IE @ Forbidden Fruit
11 Jun – Margate @ SANDS
03 Jul – Porto, PR @ Electrico Festival
04 Jun – Paris, FR @ We Love Green
07 Jul – Madrid, ES @ Mad Cool Festival
08 Jul – Trencin, SL @ Pohoda Festival
17 Jul – Dour, BE @ Dour Festival
14 Aug – Budapest, HU @ Sziget
19 Aug – Dronten, NL @ Lowlands
20 Aug – London @ Field Day
27 Aug – Pasadena, US @ This Ain’t No Picnic
03 Sep – Bristol @ FORWARDS Festival
23 Sept – New York, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium with Jamie XX, Floating Points B2B Four Tet
