Floating Factors: Cascade Album Assessment

In 2014, Sam Shepherd wrote a career-defining tune in a matter of minutes. “Nuits Sonores” was completed on a flight to the Lyon pageant of the identical identify, and it sounds as easy because it apparently was, climbing in direction of the heavens with out boiling over into extra. That is one among Shepherd’s two principal modes—when he’s not a jazz auteur, he’s a crack home and techno producer. (He additionally has a PhD in neuroscience and is a revered and adventurous selector behind the decks.) That different facet has received him fame from all corners of the music trade, culminating in Guarantees, his 2021 collaboration with Pharoah Sanders. Extra not too long ago, he’s been taking to enormous pageant phases with crossover DJs like Caribou and 4 Tet, following them of their quests to infiltrate the mainstream on their very own phrases. All these elements of Floating Factors are related, however not at all times clearly. Enter Cascade, an album that bolsters Shepherd’s membership crafty along with his musical chops in service of 1 single-minded mission: blissing out on the dance flooring.

The rollout for Cascade began again in 2022 with “Vocoder,” an industrial-strength anthem to file alongside “Nuits Sonores” and 2019’s “LesAlpx.” “Vocoder (Membership Combine)” opens the album in a boisterous rush, careening towards a breakdown of clipped vocal samples that spill out like a cargo of french fries from a turned-over semi. It’s almost reckless by Floating Factors requirements, capturing that feeling when the strobes hit exhausting and you’ll’t inform if the lights are attending to you otherwise you’re simply extra pale than you thought.

The raucous album is a direct sequel to 2019’s aggressive Crush. On that document, Shepherd showcased his newfound mastery of modular synthesis, creating cresting waves of fuzz and distortion that bore down on fitful rhythms and unpredictable music constructions—the end result, he stated, of opening enormous venues for the xx and eager to problem the viewers with “chaotic” music. This time he’s targeted on making individuals transfer as an alternative of befuddling them. Cascade is what occurred when Shepherd wasn’t capable of tour in any respect, an exorcism of dancefloor impulses impeded by the pandemic after which nurtured by the return of DJ gigs. Within the midst of recording it, he decamped to the Southern California desert to jot down the rating for a ballet, which makes Cascade a vacation and a reckoning multi functional.

These tracks redirect the jazzy vamp of basic data like Shadows into zig-zagging journeys, like these ’90s screen-saver mazes. The strategy peaks with centerpiece “Quick Ahead,” the place jittery synth leads wrap round one another like a hissing Medusa head of countermelodies and surging textures. The melodies decay and detune in actual time, highlighting Shepherd’s handiwork—digital music you’ll be able to virtually hear respiration, rising, and dying. “Afflecks Palace” takes this concept and throws a swirl of conflicting feelings at it. A nostalgic journey by means of early IDM, acid home, and jungle, it’s wiry and unpredictable, held along with a skinny thread due to Shepherd’s now appreciable expertise making this type of stuff on the fly.