Floating Points Disrupts with New Album Mere Mortals, an Electrifying Reimagining of Pandora’s Myth
One of Britain’s most respected sonic innovators has composed
a thrilling score for a futuristic retelling of the myth of Pandora
Like the live version, the recording is produced by Floating Points,
who also performs alongside the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra
Mere Mortals will be released in all formats on 28 August 2026
Her Gift will be shared online on 5 June
“The score, [Shepherd’s] first for ballet, is a thing of sonic wonder …
It’s an absolute aural roller coaster”
San Francisco Chronicle
Composer-producer-musician-DJ Floating Points, aka Sam Shepherd, is an artist of genre-defying versatility. Classically trained, revered on the international club scene, and with a Mercury Prize-shortlisted jazz album to his name, in January 2024 he played synths alongside the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra as the company gave the world premiere of his first full-length ballet score, Mere Mortals. Commissioned and directed by the San Francisco Ballet’s Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, with choreography by Aszure Barton and design and visuals by Hamill Industries, the ballet reimagines the story of Pandora in a fusion of myth, music and movement.
Together with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Floating Points has now recorded his Mere Mortals score for Deutsche Grammophon. A potent mix of elegiac strings, apocalyptic brass and pulsing electronics, the 14-track album will be released in all formats on 28 August 2026. A standalone extended single, Falling to Earth, is already available online, and taster tracks from the album will be shared in the months to come, starting with Her Gift on 5 June.
“Her Gift is a duet written for harp and Therevox ET 4.3.,” explains Shepherd, “a dance between Epimetheus and Pandora: he is falling in love with her. Prometheus appears at the very end to warn his brother off his pursuit. The harpist on the recording is the incredibly talented Miriam Adefris, who performed with me on my last tour and taught me how to write for the harp.”
Sam Shepherd grew up immersed in music. A chorister at Manchester Cathedral, he studied piano and composition in his teens at Chetham’s School of Music and often attended concerts with his father. On one occasion he saw Rosas perform Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s work Rain to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians at the Manchester MEN Arena: “I had never really seen dance before and it was just phenomenal.”
Years later, Shepherd met Tamara Rojo, incoming director of San Francisco Ballet. By this time he had achieved fame as the experimental, eclectic DJ and producer Floating Points, with a string of hit tracks and the acclaimed albums Elaenia, Crush and Promises (with jazz icon Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra). Rojo asked if he might consider composing a short piece for her new company. “I’d never even considered writing a ballet before, but I replied, ‘You know, I think I’d want to do a whole show.’ And that’s how it happened!”
He explored various ideas, including a ballet based on the work of the Manhattan Project – the secret World War Two programme that developed the first atomic bombs. His partner, dancer and choreographer Hannah Ekholm, noted the parallels with Pandora’s inadvertent unleashing of evil into the world, and this captured Shepherd’s imagination: “Every day there’s a new Pandora, right? A new can of worms being opened.” Inspired by classicist-author-broadcaster Natalie Haynes, he also looked into the way misogyny had woven its way into the myth. “The translations [of Pandora’s story] robbed her of her agency, whilst describing her as being ‘gifted’ rather than the more accurate ‘giving’. Pandora’s not about bringing hell to Earth. She really represents curiosity and change.”
The resulting Mere Mortals score is rich in texture and effect, and captivating even without the choreography and visuals of a staged performance. The lyrical solo violin in Hope (Cordula Merks) contrasts starkly with the dissonance and pummelling percussion of Rage of the Gods, for example, while the exquisite harp melody in Her Gift offers a moment’s reflection before the eeriness of Opening of the Jar augurs disaster.
As the SFBO’s Music Director and Principal Conductor Martin West notes: “The orchestral music emerges from an electronic haze – not in contrast to it, but as if growing organically out of the same material [and thus mirroring] the ballet’s central question: where does the human end and the machine begin?” He praises the score as “unmistakably of this moment, yet rooted in the formal discipline that makes great ballet music great. There are themes that develop, textures that breathe, and silences that speak.”
The ballet imagines a new ending to the myth, referencing climate crisis – Hope, in the shape of a bird, flies free from Pandora’s jar but can only circle a planet reduced to ash. “My favourite part of the whole process was writing Nowhere to land,” says Shepherd. “When I heard the music I’d written on the page transformed by Cordula’s exquisite violin-playing it made me excited to write more in the future!”
Floating Points will appear live in the European premiere of Mere Mortals at the 2026 Edinburgh International Festival (28 August, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; further performances 29 & 30 August), and when the work transfers to Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London (9–12 September, with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia).
