MUMBAI: Sam Shepherd AKA Floating Points has announced his new album 'Cascade' set to release on September 13 via Ninja Tune, along with the release of lead single "Key103". Named after an underground Manchester radio station that Sam listened to religiously which helped expand his music sensibilities beyond the classical composers he focused on in his academic work at Chetham's School of Music.

The artwork for the single "Key103" comes from Tokyo-based artist Akiko Nakayama. Nakayama is a painter who depicts the beauty of conveying energy metamorphosis through media such as installation, videos, and performance. She brings painting to life by combining the energy of movement and the vibrance of colours, called "Alive Painting".

'Cascade' is an eruption of unfinished business. In late 2022, Shepherd – renowned for drifting between genres as freely as his stage name implies – found himself in the Californian desert working on something new. Creating the album stripped Shepherd back. Not only in terms of his set-up – "I have a studio at home with all the gear I usually use, but I wasn’t there so I had to use my laptop, doing it all on headphones", he says – but in terms of his connection to electronic music, and to his home city where his love of music first flourished. "There’s something about Manchester that keeps coming back to me, and I think it’s partly to do with its record shops", says the producer, who found himself instinctively naming tracks after local landmarks and institutions.

Some of the tracks on 'Cascade' also took inspiration from the dust bowl surroundings off the Californian desert, but make no mistake: 'Cascade' is a record forged in an adolescence spent in Manchester, discovering the mind-expanding (and emotion-purging) power of electronic music in all its forms. Though devised as a continuation of 'Crush', 'Cascade' nonetheless pushes Floating Points’ sound forward into new places. The nine songs here are allowed to smoulder and spark for up to eight minutes at a time, allowing for more expansive exploration of sounds and grooves than before.

"I’m just constantly chasing challenges", says Shepherd, explaining how this album fits into his ever-expanding web of creative projects, of which there are many. "I always want to keep things moving and go all in on things that excite me. Whether that’s working with a 100-piece orchestra on a ballet or on a laptop on my own", Shepherd grins. 'Cascade' is the proof – when it comes to electronic innovation and simmering tracks that stand hairs on end, Floating Points will always, always have unfinished business.