About

2LP pressed on standard black vinyl

Housed in gatefold sleeve

Features etching on side D of vinyl

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This album Mere Mortals is composer-producer Floating Points’s (Sam Shepherd) first full-length ballet score. Shepherd, who is known for mesmeric live sets that often combine acoustic and electronic instruments, wrote the work in response to a commission from Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet.  

Inspired by the myth of Pandora and laced with metatextual poetry, Mere Mortals was premiered at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House in January 2024, directed by Rojo, with choreography by Aszure Barton and design and visuals by Hamill Industries. The score blends orchestral and electronic sounds to powerful effect, echoing the retelling of the myth by drawing parallels between Pandora’s story and the unforeseeable impact of scientific progress on our own society today. — (via Label)

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Sam Sheperd, the Ph.D.-level neuroscientist turned electronic musician known as Floating Points, does not shy away from conceiving ambitious, larger than life pieces of music that are beyond transcendental. The unforgettable Promises with the London Symphony Orchestra and the late Pharoah Sanders is direct evidence of that. The instant I was made aware that there was another such album, not just on the horizon but fully ready to feast my ears on as fast as my responsibilities would let me, I knew deep inside me that the impossible had not only been done, but it had been done again and across multiple dimensions this time around.

Mere Mortals isn’t a traditional piece of standalone music, like previous works in Sheperd’s catalogue, but rather a companion piece to what I am assuming to be a visionary ballet performance that was meticulously concocted with choreographer Aszure Barton and the 80-piece ensemble that is the San Francisco Ballet Orchestral. Given that I didn’t even know that this album existed until after it had already released, little did I know that this multi-dimensional work of art (extra emphasis on art) is conceptually a modern twist between the mythology of Pandora and the Pandora’s box (or rather jar, also pun intended) that is artificial intelligence.

Much like theater performances that are meant to cycle the audience through the spectrum of human emotion, Mere Mortals does exactly that only having to enter through your temporal lobe and nothing else. “Fire” and “Hope” beautifully set the stage with some gorgeous musical exposition, only for the listener to swiftly be thrown into the absolutely discordant chaos that is “Rage of the Gods” (the track lives up to its name). This song in particular was and still is immensely stressful to listen to; the first listen had my bowels loosened for its full duration. Towards the end of this track, there is a steady, lingering cowbell that creeps in and continues onto the following movement as well as appears later onwards in other songs. Latching onto that consistent, familiar rhythm whenever I hear it deep in the background is equal parts comforting and unsettling (as in “Falling to Earth”). — (via Everything Is Noise)

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Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Format: Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition
Released: 2026
Genre: Electronic, Classical
Style: Abstract

File under: Ambient / Experimental / IDM
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