Floating Points

Benji B

Please welcome Floating Points.

[applause]

Floating Points

Thank you.

Benji B

We can call you Sam, right? Dr. Sam?

Floating Points

[laughs] Yes, if you want.

Benji B

Okay. I think we should just start with asking you, Sam, what you’re up to at the moment. First of all, before we get into that, what were we just listening to?

Floating Points

[placing vinyl in sleeve] That was Talk Talk, a big pop band. It’s their last record [Spirit of Eden]. It means a lot to a lot of people I think that’s why it became a cult record, and then got shelved as soon as it was released.

Benji B

What did it mean to you?

Floating Points

It was a bit of a turning point just in a sort of introspective music. Just so many elements to it, the recording... I don’t know, I can just listen to this over and over again, and I hear something else in it each time I hear it. So many of the techniques... The guy who recorded it is Phil Brown, and he wrote a book about a lot of the work he did in recording. He worked for Island Records, Bob Marley & The Wailers, a lot of the early stuff. He recorded this, it took them over a year, I think, to record in Wessex Studios, in London. And so, for example, the drums in that you heard were recorded with a single U47, it’s a Neumann microphone about 30 feet from the drums. I heard that and I was like, “OK, that’s how I’m going to record drums now.” I did a record, it’s actually next to it, and a remix, and I recorded the drums in the same way and I was trying to copy that, the way that record sounded. Yes, I’m obsessed with this [Talk Talk] record.

Benji B

Obviously, we’re all music fans in the room but some people might not be familiar with you or your work so far, and they will be by the end of the lecture, but could you give us a bit of background on who you are, where you’re from, and what you do for a living?

Floating Points

Erm, I’m called Sam, 28, from Manchester [England] but I live in London now. I went... It’s like a music school, as a child. It was at chorister at a cathedral in Manchester, and I was at a school there for music and when my voice broke I stayed on as a pianist and composer. I got quite heavily into jazz and electronic music whilst I was there. And then I went to London for university, a lot of my friends went to music college, but I went to do a normal degree in pharmacology. Because my resources for musicians around me had kind of evaporated a little bit, because I was just doing an academic university, I was making way more electronic music, just by myself with my laptop, and going out quite a lot. [laughs] And then from the friends I met through these events started putting out my music, because no one... Well, there was people talking about it, and I was like, “Well, I’ll have to do it myself.” And now I’m here.

Benji B

And are you a formally trained pianist, or a musician, or self-taught?

Floating Points

Yeah, I’m formally trained, I’m not very good. I’ve got my friends who are killer pianists, but I can sort of get by, yeah. I can play.

Benji B

Was your background more classical, or jazz, or traditional? What was it?

Floating Points

Initially, I guess, purely classical. I didn’t really enjoy playing the piano for many years and it’s only until I started getting a bit better at it and I could start choosing a repertoire I was playing then I started to enjoy it. Then when I started getting into jazz that was when I really started to enjoy it because that’s the sort of ultimate freedom. It all goes from just reading the dots on the page to the piano becoming an extension of what you want to do.

Benji B

Who are the composers that were the portal for that, for your discovery of new music as a pianist?

Floating Points

At the time a lot of French impressionist, so Debussy, Messiaen... I didn’t actually see much harmonic sort of... I saw a lot of harmonic similarity in the way a sort of Bill Evans voicing, Keith Jarrett sort of voicing would be the way Debussy would treat harmony. That was a bridge, and maybe even some Gershwin and Bernstein, but yeah, I saw so much similarity, I actually scored a soft landing into the world of jazz. That’s when the record-buying started because where I lived in Manchester, I lived in the city center, the cheapest way for me to get hold of music, the only way actually, was the local record shops. There was a few streets there which have got some amazing record shops, and back then, sort of the beginning of CDs, when they were 25 quid [pounds] or something, and everyone was getting rid of their records, I got some really great jazz records quite early on. And had a good piano teacher Les Chisnall and Steve Barry. They were really instrumental in focusing me, quite early on, in really good jazz. I’m indebted to them.

Benji B

When did it move into this electronic realm? What was your first...?

Floating Points

At the same time my school had a fancy new digital studio and they had an old studio that was an Atari, it was an old black-and-white computer that you had to install Cubase every time you turned it on. That was plugged into an Akai S-950 and the S-950 went into a multi-track. Back then I was sampling stuff but I was sampling things like keys jangling, and vacuum cleaners. One of the early tunes I did, “Vacuum Boogie,” was from a sample that I had from the S-950, still on a floppy disk, so that’s my parents’ Dyson hoover.

[laughter]

Benji B

Can we hear about the “Vacuum Boogie”?

Floating Points

Yeah, I don’t really...

Benji B

Just to give you a bit of context to this lecture, me getting Sam to play any of his old music is a bit like getting blood out of a stone because he hates hearing anything more than six months old which is why I started with something brand new. So the more you can help me encourage him to play some of the older stuff, the better.

Floating Points

You’ll hear...

Benji B

You don’t have to play the whole thing.

Floating Points

Yeah, you’ll hear the sample in the first second, so we can stop listening to it after that.

(music: Floating Points – “Vacuum Boogie” / applause)

Benji B

Was that one of the first tunes you put out?

Floating Points

Yeah, I think so. On Eglo [Records], it’s number two, it’s the second record.

Benji B

Cool. What was that made on?

Floating Points

That was made on a Virgin train from Manchester to London, on my headphones. Because I remember picking up the sample at home and then being on the train on my way back and I just made it on... Because you can press Caps Lock and get keyboards on your computer, so I just made the...

Benji B

On Logic.

Floating Points

Logic, yeah. So it was... Yeah, it was a train journey.

Benji B

Moving, as you were saying, getting into records and getting into electronic producing and stuff, what were the moments that made you want to start DJing? Who were the DJs that influenced you the most?

Floating Points

I was DJing at school, doing school-disco kind of things. I was buying a lot of records then, when I was young. I was obviously way more selective, because I was a kid and I had no money, but when I moved to London I was going to a lot of parties, and back then I was really into drum & bass, like crazy. I’ll fast-forward a bit, I’ll just answer the question. Who made me start taking it seriously was people like Ade [Fakile] from Plastic People, Theo [Parrish] at Plastic, and some other nights at Plastic People, and other nights at Deviation, like your own night. That’s when I started taking it a bit more seriously. And also, my friend, Tom and I started a party in London when we were 18, when we were students, at a venue called The Rhythm Factory on a Wednesday night. It was a night for a cancer charity, and it was quite successful, actually. We raised quite a lot of money and it was really good fun. He would do the main room, him and Toby, and then me and my friends would do the other room. The same people owned a venue called The Gramaphone, and upstairs at The Gramaphone I would DJ on a Friday night there, just all night. It built up a bit of steam, people were coming down to it. The people who gave me the confidence to really... The idea of recontextualizing a lot of records I had, or there was a lot of records I had but wouldn’t ever think I could play them in a dance situation, were people like Ade, Theo, and the other nights going on at Plastic, like Nonsense. Ade was really especially important, because you’d go down and the way he plays I can’t really describe it. The music is so inviting. It’s like the music is reaching out of the speakers and dragging you closer, almost as if the shape of the room changes with the music. Plastic People’s an extremely dark space, and for the club to feel light through music is something Ade managed to do, I think.

Benji B

Could you just explain what Plastic People is, where it is, and who Ade is?

Floating Points

Okay. Plastic People is a club in London, in East London. It’s a 200-capacity basement and it’s got a ridiculous soundsystem. There’s been two incarnations of the system whilst I’ve been around. The old one was a Funktion-One, the new one’s a custom thing. The old one was just so loud, I mean, the sound is amazing and especially when he brought out these fancy old German broadcast turntables, called EMTs [Elektro-Mess-Technik]. The pre-amp inside those is phenomenal, and the sound of records when he played on those it was just something else. You can’t describe it. Hearing music in that space on that system with the people that frequented it and the people who were, obviously, most instrumental to the actual party was a real turning point in the way I DJed, I think. In playing, not feeling like it’s a problem to play jazz records in a club.

Benji B

Have you got a record that you’d like to play to sort of illustrate that era?

Floating Points

Let me see. This is an Ade classic, it’s Azymuth’s first album. All the tunes are kind of good but this one, especially the drums, sound sick.

Benji B

I should mention, as well, that it’s significant to say that Ade owns the club.

Floating Points

Oh, yeah. That’s Ade’s club.

Benji B

And used to do once a week on a Saturday, and crucially not mixing many of the records, right? That’s an important thing to mention about the EMTs.

Floating Points

Yeah, technically. He used to hit the start/stop button so hard, sometimes the needle would skip. His style was amazing though, because you’d get halfway through a record, and he’d just be like, stop, start another one. It would be “Strawberry Fields” into a Mala dubplate that no one had and then go into some Recloose thing and then he’d go into this [points at desk], and then into Pharoah Sanders and he’d play all 20 minutes of it, and... It’s nuts. It’s the only time I’ve cried in the club.

[laughter]

It was Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On.”

(music: Azymuth – “Manha” / applause)

Benji B

Classic Brazilian Azymuth, that I know went on to influence your approach to sound and drums and stuff, right?

Floating Points

That record, yeah. I mean, there’s so many records that I heard in that space that informed the way I would try and make music. I don’t really know, in the studio I don’t know what I’m doing, I just know what I’d like to think I know what I like the sound of. It’s all about experimenting, so it took me about five years to realize the Coles 4038 [microphone], which we’ve got downstairs above the drums at the moment, for me, it gives the best image of a drum kit in certain situations, but it always gives me a really nice recording sound. So, I’ve learnt the long way. I don’t know how they managed to get the sound on that and I’d hate to find out it’s just one mic. I mean, it’s 90% the player.

Benji B

And talk to me about the sound that you identify that you like, because you do come across as a complete connoisseur of sound for someone so young, it’s true. What was your journey of discovery in identifying the palette and the textures in sound that meant the most to you?

Floating Points

Purely recordings, listening to recordings and hearing so many different styles of recording. As people were walking in and I was playing that Steve Kuhn, [holds up record] and I don’t know if you noticed, the voice was super up-front in the mix, and you can see the picture of the mic there [points], it’s a broadcast microphone. Things like that made me feel it’s all right to experiment with the way I record things. Although there’s no right way or wrong way to do it, perhaps. Using studios, being in studio situations with people, producing people’s records, using equipment, pretending I know what I’m doing but actually I have no idea, and just saying, “Oh yeah, I’ll use that microphone because it looks funny,” and then all the engineers are like, “What are you doing?”

Benji B

Yeah.

Floating Points

And then getting interesting results with it. And sometimes not working at all, but that doesn’t matter.

Benji B

And do you have a space of your own that you can record live music in?

Floating Points

Right. When I started my post-graduate study five years ago, I started building a studio in London, sort of for the record label I started, and for artists that are on it, and also for my own stuff. Yeah, it’s kind of a big space, maybe two-thirds of this room. It’s one big space with a console in it and stuff, recording stuff, synthesizers and microphones. Recently, since finishing university properly, I’ve finally soldered the patch bay completely. It’s good to have that space, and not have the pressure to... A lot of studios are super expensive, daily rates and things like that, so you don’t really want to be wasting time. This is much more relaxed.

Benji B

Seeing as you’re someone who has invested so much time in discovering exciting bits of old equipment and finding out the sounds of things that you love, if you were to recommend people three or four essential bits, must-have starter bits for live recording, which little bits of gear would you pick?

Floating Points

That’s so hard. I really don’t want to say. Outboard mixers, of whatever caliber, you’ll always have, I think, more control over a mix than doing inside the box. But then you can get such good results from a computer. I made all my first records, just completely, just the headphone output of my laptop, so I don’t know. I can’t answer that, it’s too difficult. It’s a question of budget, anyways, isn’t it? So it’s too difficult to answer for me. I don’t know, sorry.

Benji B

No, that’s cool. Let’s talk about a different subject, you mentioned finishing uni. You’ve been busy with something else. Music is not the only thing in your life, right, Dr. Sam Shepherd?

Floating Points

Right. Yeah, so I finished uni, and then I worked for a year for Cancer Research UK, working the clinical trials and stuff. And then whilst I was there I applied for a PhD, because I got really into neuroscience in doing my degree. So I applied for a PhD, got the PhD, and then that was in neurogenetics of pain, so I was interested in the peripheral sensory neurons that encode pain sensations, and the DNA inside those single neurons, and the way in which machinery works in those cells can be modulated in pain states. And so we try and hijack that system therapeutically, hopefully to find different ways of treating pain. So, I finished that earlier this year.

Benji B

Is pain just in the mind, then?

Floating Points

All pain is in the brain, yeah. I don’t want to get into this. [laughs] You know, people will definitely fall asleep. Yeah, it was a really great time. My professor, John Wood, he’s an amazing guy who was very, very supportive of all my musical endeavors as well, so he was always happy for my to run off on a Friday to Heathrow to go and do a gig. So yeah, I learned so much there, there was a good soldering iron there as well, [laughs] so if I needed to make wires.

Benji B

You successfully completed your PhD, right? Congratulations on becoming Dr. Simon Shepherd. Dr. Flo-Po!

[applause]

How did the relationship between science and music work during that time? How did you balance the lifestyles, and did one complement the other?

Floating Points

It was quite difficult in terms of time. I live very near the university so that was very convenient for me in terms of not wasting much time. I do the sort of nine to five, six or whatever, and then go home and make music. And sometimes with science, especially if you’re doing nine to three AM or something, and sometimes the experiment doesn’t work at all. So you leave at midday, although you shouldn’t. Any free time I’d make music, and I think they didn’t really feed each other in terms of the overlap of the process of science and music, only insomuch that hypothesizing is a creative process. I think music was definitely a release for me, when I’d go home, and when something’s not working which it inevitably doesn’t in genetics. I’d go home and make music, and be able to switch off a bit, and that was definitely nice.

Benji B

Sort of release or escape.

Floating Points

Definitely, yeah. Even listening to music was...

Benji B

Let’s listen to another record, why don’t you pick one of your favorites. You brought a selected few today.

Floating Points

This is Air, the Air album. I think everyone should... This is a New York group. It’s very difficult to actually play anything off of this because it’s all so good...

Audience Member

“Mr. Man”!

Floating Points

[laughs] “Mr. Man,” yeah, there you go. We got a request.

(music: Air – “Mr. Man”)

[comments] It’s Googie Williams, no, Googie Coppola, she’s a singer, and her way of singing melodies is just amazing.

[applause]

Benji B

When did you discover that one?

Floating Points

It was Sean McAuliffe, who’s a part of the Nonsense Crew from Plastic People, he played it on a radio show once. And he played “Jail Cell,” which I just couldn’t believe it, so if you ever see this record, definitely pick it up. It’s amazing.

Benji B

We can all tell by now that you’re a serious record digger and record collector, but I know that you’re also a staunch vinyl enthusiast and that is your preferred medium. Do you want to talk to us about why that is?

Floating Points

I got into records, as I said, just because it was the easiest format for me to get music when I was younger. I think maybe, if it had been now I don’t know if I would be. It’s definitely a sort of... A problem. It’s kind of developed into... I don’t fetishize it in any way, but I do definitely enjoy the process of finding music, digging through music. When I was at uni, I’d go to the States, I’d buy a ticket to Chicago with my student loan [laughs] and then figure out how to actually eat. And then go over and buy as many records as possible because it worked out so much cheaper, and discovered so much in that process of going to places, meeting people at record stores. That sort of advice you get from a guy at a shop, like Peabody’s Records, Mark and Mike Grusane will always beat a Juno recommendation based on, “This, you’re going to like this.” It’s going to be way more wild, you’re going to find way more wild music in that process. The value of record shops, record dealers, I think, were paramount in me discovering interesting music. That’s why, if there was a MP3 dealer or something that did the same thing, maybe I’d be into that as well, but... Yeah, I got really into records.

Benji B

Talking of Chicago and the amazing tradition of DJing that’s come from there, you are quite rare for a younger DJ, if that’s okay to say, in the sense that you have taken the baton of that tradition, of chasing the pitch and playing classics and DJing, for the most part, unquantized live music, and you take that art form seriously. Is that something you had to study and practice for a while?

Floating Points

It was actually the first time Mark and Mike at Peabody’s, in the south of Chicago. They would open their shop at ten o’clock in the morning, close it at ten, midnight, whatever. The whole day they were DJing. People would bring records in and they would just be going through records and be like, “Yes, OK,” throw it on, and they’d just ride pitch control. First time I’d ever seen it, and I was like, “That’s crazy.” That’s how you actually mix two live records. I thought, “I’m going to copy them.” I went back to London and started doing it, and just practicing. I don’t have a pair of turntables at home, now, I only have one, so I can’t really practice. I probably should though. It was out of necessity, really, because a lot of the music that I wanted to play, especially because of the music I was buying, was unquantized. And I was playing, at this point, I was doing the bar thing, The Gramaphone. I had to, it was out of necessity. I was playing a little bit of house music and stuff.

Benji B

That summarizes what you’re best known for as a DJ. If I think about your set, I will think about a bit of house music and some modern stuff but generally, for the most part, older music, or music from the crate, sort of thing. What is it about older music, why is that your preferred era to draw from?

Floating Points

I don’t know.

Benji B

Is it that you don’t like much new music?

Floating Points

No, that’s absurd. No, because I really do enjoy music, I buy a lot of new music and I go to the record shop every week and buy records. And I do DJ them a little bit but not nearly as much as the other stuff. There’s definitely a certain aesthetic in the older music that I play that I search for in new music, and that’s the kind of, the aesthetic I want to be playing in a club, this inviting thing, the Ade thing, of warmth. So if it’s a brand-new cold techno record, I might not be interested in playing it at the sort of events that I do. But then I would not say that I would never play them because contrast is great. It’s a very tricky question and I don’t know why I don’t play as much at the moment. It goes through phases, at the moment I’m going through a crazy modern soul phase, I went through a Brazilian phase a few years ago. I think I’m starting to calm down on the modern soul stuff that I’m getting really in to.

Benji B

How do you define modern soul? What is that?

Floating Points

The way I’m thinking about it is late, mid- to late ‘70s soul, where soul started crossing over into disco, so you’d find a lot of disco records on 45 [RPM]. In fact, this is a perfect example, my friend Julia showed me this record about five years ago, and it was such a mad turning point for me that we started a little party in London and New York called You’re A Melody because of this tune. This is where I am when I started getting into modern soul.

(music: Aged In Harmony – “You’re A Melody” / applause)

Benji B

So, go on and tell us, what’s the craziest amount [you paid for a record]? What’s the most you’ve gone to? Is that off limits, that question?

Floating Points

Yeah, because it’s going to get worse. Through this record, I met a lot of people through gaining these records, like DJ Love On The Run from New York, DJ McBoing Boing from New York; and Jeremy Underground Paris, as well, he’s really into this stuff, and Pearl Girls, Julie and Anna, who DJ as Javibes. They’ve taught me so much about this music and so I am highly indebted to them for this sort of knowledge. And Red Greg as well, in London, these guys have taught me a lot about this music. I really wish I could play all these to you because they’re so beautiful, these records.

Benji B

Is it true that you once swapped a 7” record for a car?

Floating Points

[laughs] Yeah, that’s true. I can’t even drive so I gave the car to my girlfriend. It was a really nice record but it was a nice car as well, so everyone won.

Benji B

Tell me about your mixer of choice. I know that you have had a dedication to the highest level in all things and that’s culminated in an amazing new project, you pretty much built an amazing new DJ mixer. Tell us about the journey of your taste in mixers and why you’ve chosen them and why you have eventually chosen to build one yourself.

Floating Points

I’m into good-sounding stuff, records, mixers, anything that makes a record, I’m into it sounding good. I’m sure everyone will agree there. There’s certain mixers that I feel don’t sound good because they digitize the signal, and you can hear that, and there’s some mixers that I don’t like the feel of them, like some of the upfade, these faders, they feel okay, but there’s certain mixers where their faders are too loose, and things like that. There’s a certain ergonomic thing about it, as well. The way the record sounds on some mixers I just find really unpleasant, and having used a few mixers like Bozak and Urei, things like this, they sound really nicely. And the control you have, the fade, the linearity of the volume going up and down, it feels like you’re controlling a gas fire, or something. The power of the fade feels much... I can’t use words to describe it, you just have to try it out. I’m not into rotary mixers but I’m into good-sounding mixers, and it just so happens that most rotary pots are made to a higher specification, maybe. I don’t know what it is, but the mixer in my studio has linear faders, but in the DJ world the most ergonomic fade is on rotary. A friend of mine builds equipment and we thought we’d try and build a class-A mixer, so the circuitry... It’s a nice circuit, basically. It sounds very, very nice, very, very transient mixers, and then summing’s really pleasant. You’re welcome to come try it out sometime. It’s sitting in Plastic People.

Benji B

Yeah, you can’t travel with that, right? How big is it? How big is the power supply?

Floating Points

The power supply’s at 4U, and then the mixer itself is like 8U. But it’s about 42kg in total, so it’s quite heavy, it’s really heavy. Trying to lift it up the stairs myself... [laughs] Yeah.

Benji B

What have you learned in your journey of learning about mixers? What have you learned makes a good DJ mixer? What makes a DJ mixer sound good? What is the specifics of what you were just describing?

Floating Points

The technical side of it?

Benji B

Yeah.

Floating Points

I’m not really an expert.

Benji B

Is it good pots, is it good circuitry...?

Floating Points

Yeah, good circuitry, decent power supply. And if it’s a fancy mixer with all the effects and things like that, a good conversion. Because I think that the DACs [digital/analog converters] in some of these mixers aren’t really up to the standard of the studios that use DACs that were recording the music. So it feels like a bottleneck, basically, in the whole process. You’ve got amazing speakers, good crossover, decent amps, CDJs sound amazing, needles and mixers can sound good. The mixer sometimes, I feel, it’s the weakest link in the chain. So it’s basically an endeavor to make something that I felt really comfortable with, because I do a party as Plastic People, now, on a regular basis, and that soundsystem is so good that it deserves to have as good a signal as possible. And when you get to the crossover at that club it’s everything before it, the mixer and the turntables is the weakest part of it. It’s an endeavor for trying to reproduce the music as well as possible.

Benji B

You designed it yourself, basically.

Floating Points

I actually drew it on the back of an envelope and gave it to McKenna. It was relatively hands-off, because I really don’t know much about the technical stuff, you know? I’ve heard different examples of different transformers and things like this but it gets very, very nerdy very, very quickly, that world of nickel and...

Benji B

But it’s got isolators on it?

Floating Points

Yeah, it’s got an isolator on each channel. And the weird thing about it is the channel one, channel two on top of each other, so the faders are kind of like that. And then the idea is that you can have the isolators down on one channel, you can swap the bass lines over, swap the mids over, swap the treble over, and if you’re playing electronic music that’s quantized you can create really nice fades. So rather than using volume you can fade different parts of the frequency spectrum over. That was the impetus behind that.

Benji B

Somewhere in between record-digging, becoming a doctor, and doing a PhD, composing, and producing, you also have time to run a record label. Tell us about Eglo Recordings.

Floating Points

It started, actually, at CDR’s night in London. I think it happens elsewhere in the world now where you go down with work you’ve been working on and you share it with everyone. And it’s really highly recommended by people who know about it. You go down everybody plays their music, they put it up on a projector whose track it is. I went down there once with a tune called “For You” which is kind of like a hip-hop thing. It was Alex Nut who was there, he’s a DJ on Rinse FM. He was asking Tony [Nwachukwu], the guy who runs it, whose record was playing, he pointed at me, sort of a nerdy guy in the corner, and he was like, “It doesn’t really fit, it doesn’t fit my demeanor.” He’s like, “What are you doing with this record?” I’m like, “Nothing, I’m just making music for fun.” He’s like, “Let’s put it out.” We didn’t have a clue what we were doing, we just went down to Transition, which was the place to cut at the time, it was where all the dubstep guys were getting all their stuff cut. We got it cut to a 45, and then I actually kept it in the fridge in the university for two weeks before, whilst we were trying to find out what we do next. We took it down to the plant to get it turned into a stack of records and then we shopped them out to shops. From that we got a company, Kudos Records in London, they hit us up and were like, “Do you want us to do your distribution for you?” Which was really useful because going to the post office 500 times is really not much fun. That’s how it started.

Benji B

What should we play from the Eglo catalog?

Floating Points

Erm... Well I’ve got music from myself and Fatima.

Benji B

Yeah, cool.

Floating Points

Yeah?

Benji B

Box fresh, yeah?

Floating Points

[unwrapping new record] Yeah. I don’t know. Lots of big tunes on this.

Benji B

Just quickly, who’s Fatima?

Floating Points

Fatima is a singer. Again, we met her at Plastic People. She used to jump on the mic at a lot of parties in London, and would just smash it, it was crazy. It would just be a party, and this girl would turn up and start singing, and the whole thing was... It was a crazy time. And yeah, we started working on music a long time ago. Actually, I’m going to play something else. [changes record] We started working on music a long time ago, on a record that came out a few years ago, called Mind Traveling EP. It’s a four-tracker, and it took us so long to make this record because we became really good friends, we would hang out, basically, rather than making music. So, this is the first thing we did together. This track, maybe. With your help from the radio, it blew up, this record, so thank you. [laughs]

(music: Fatima feat. Floating Points – “Mind” / applause)

Benji B

That’s music from Fatima produced by Floating Points, Eglo #14 I can see on there. How many releases are you up to now on the label?

Floating Points

43 are in manufacture at the moment.

Benji B

And can you give us some names of other artists you’ve released?

Floating Points

There’s Fatima, FunkinEven, Shuanise, there’s Flako, Shafiq Hussein, me.

Benji B

It seems like with the names you bring up and what you’ve been talking about, that music scenes, or maybe better put, music communities, have been important to you in both meeting people but also in musical discovery as well, and a support network as well. Is that fair to say?

Floating Points

Right. Yeah, through the music I play, from friends teaching me about music, to the record I put out, these were all friends. So Fatima, Stevie, FunkinEven, everyone we put out we had a personal relationship with, like we’ve met them, we’re friends. Stevie, we didn’t know he was making music we were just friends with him and he’s like, “Oh, I make tracks.” And it was killer tracks, so, yeah, we put those out. It’s felt a lot nicer doing things that way.

Benji B

What was your first? Was it the “Invisible” remix that was it one of the first. Or was it “The Wires”? What was the first live thing you put out?

Floating Points

There’s a 10" I did on Ninja Tune a few years ago which was a live, more orchestral thing. That was a band that I sort of had at school I’d written a few things for and we reconvened in London to record this. We got asked to do a Maida Vale session for Gilles’ [Peterson] show, and they thought, I think, that I was going to turn up with a laptop at Maida Vale and I turned up with 16 people. We recorded that, and then Ninja Tune re- recorded it again. We did that at Abbey Road, in fact, when I was there that’s when I sort of stole all of their techniques, like how to record things, just picking up, just observing how these engineers were working, because I think it’s a good-sounding record. That was the first orchestral stuff, and then actually straight after that, we recorded the “Wires” track and that was in 2009, I think, and that only came out last year. Because it was such a collage, it took me so long to put it together.

Benji B

Do you just record lots of material and then comp the best bits kind of thing?

Floating Points

I had a plan and a score for it, but the way I recorded it, because, again, I didn’t really know what was I was doing, I recorded a massive long drum track and then put everything on top of it and recorded phrases. There’s a horn section, which is doing these massive arpeggios, which, if you listen to it it’s impossible to actually play because they never breathe. That was some copy and pasting stuff, and there’s actually a section right at the very beginning which was, I’d just heard that “Sand and Rain” record, who’s that by? The French record “Sand and Rain”? No. Anyway, I’d just heard that and I was like, “That’s amazing.” And there was a [Hammond] B3 organ in the studio, I’d never played one before, and so we tacked that stuff on the beginning of the record. We had two days in the studio, just experimenting.

Benji B

You were mentioning about that Steve, or was it the Talk Talk record that influenced The Invisible...?

Floating Points

Right, yeah, the recording.

Benji B

Do you literally hear something and think, “I like the sound of that,” and then research how they did it and then have a go at it?

Floating Points

For that, yeah. The thing is Phil Brown wrote a book and there was a big section on recording of that album. So, yeah, I tried to copy it.

Benji B

I think The Invisible remix is pretty amazing. We should probably listen to that before we wrap it up.

Floating Points

[unwraps new record]

Benji B

All your personal records are completely unopened, just travel with a new one every time. [laughter] Anything you want to say about this before we play it? Because we should probably listen to most of it.

Floating Points

This is kind of a prototype for what I was trying to get into myself, for my own stuff. It was this idea of a Buchla being the main drum sound, the percussive elements, and then drums on the top. This is a band, The Invisible, a really, amazing, amazing band, I think, and really good friends of mine. They’ve got a studio around the corner from mine, so we hang out a lot. And so I did this for them. In fact, I used Dave Okumu’s, who is the singer, I used his backing vocal as the main vocal, and he came and resang it, as like a main line. And then I recorded the drums myself, they we’re a little bit cack-handed. I don’t know what speed it is.

(music: The Invisible – “Wings (Floating Points remix)” / applause)

Benji B

Right, it’s question time. I don’t know if anyone’s got a starter?

Audience Member

What was that track called?

Floating Points

The band’s called The Invisible and the track’s called “Wings.”

Audience Member

Hey.

Floating Points

Hi.

Audience Member

Let me just make a preface first, I’m a Brazilian so I see you are into a lot of Brazilian stuff. Actually, I was listening to the mixtape of just Brazilian music released, like, four months ago, and I saw that you put some Hareton Salvanini stuff [on there] and he worked with my father on a lot of records. And it’s amazing that you know him because even in Brazil he is not very known. The thing is, I saw also that you did a residency in Morocco a while back and in the situation that you were into, it was like you were trying mixing electronic music with, not fusion, right, but like making music with traditional music and electronic stuff, right? Brazil is a big country and we are very closed on ourselves so it’s kind of hard to make something different and being not pinpointed. They have preconceived ideas about using a lot of electronic stuff, and so I wanted to know, what was the guidelines you used for making music with Gnawa people in Morocco?

Floating Points

Okay. We went over there not knowing really what to expect. I had heard Gnawa music, but I didn’t know much about it. There was no pressure on us to do anything, to actually come up with anything, so my biggest fear was that it would be a fusion thing. I could play you, actually, what I did.

Audience Member

Yeah, yeah, please.

Floating Points

If that’s okay? This is probably going to be easier. This is the first time that I worked with Mahmoud Guinia, and this is the first time he and his fellow musicians played to a click track, so it was quite an interesting experience for all of us. And James Holden was there as well, we were working together on a lot of stuff. I think this might be the one, lets see.

(music: Maâlem Mahmoud Guinia & Floating Points – “Mimoun Marhaba”)

[comments] It’s recorded outside because everything’s tiled in Morocco, so we recorded outside. You can actually hear the birds. The musicians are clapping, and the sense of rhythm is something that I still can’t put my finger on.

[applause]

That didn’t actually answer your question.

Audience Member

It’s like the music continues to be their own, right? It’s like you are just making the... Circulating it around.

Floating Points

Right. I felt like we were making music together, and that’s something I was really scared of, was: “They’re going to play, I’m going to play, and there’s going to be nothing going on between us.” Whilst we were playing there’s smiles going on, it was such a positive experience, the whole week was really amazing. Me and James, and Vessel, and Biosphere were there as well. I was so nervous that nothing fruitful would come of it, or there would just be a complete breakdown of understanding. And even though the triplet clapping, then... It’s not a triplet, I can’t work out what it is. It’s so groovy, all the music is so groovy, but I can’t do it. It’s not inherently difficult to play a qaraqib, but it is the way they do it. It’s super impressive and there’s a festival in Essaouira once a year, about the same time as SONAR, of Gnawa music, it’s highly recommended, it’s a really, really amazing festival.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Audience Member

Hey, thanks for everything you’ve shared with us, I’m totally amazed. And I wrote my question, because everything that you’ve shown from your work, I feel it has... If you trust elements in time, is that a conscious way of working? Because they have that perspective in not having a rush about everything that has to appear in a song. Because I really love that you trust what you have, you don’t rush anything. I love that.

Floating Points

I think it’s definitely a dilemma I have, is that...

Benji B

She means all your records are really long, bruv.

[laughter]

Audience Member

No!

Benji B

I’m just kidding.

Floating Points

It’s funny though because a lot of Brazilian music, like Hareton Salvanini he cuts to the chase. This album is probably... How many tracks? Six tracks per side, each song is two and a half minutes, three minutes long. With a lot of Brazilian music, it’s so hard to DJ because by the time it’s started it’s over. Then you’re like, “Oh, here’s the next record.” It’s something that I’m trying to actually make, shorter pieces of music, but then I find it very difficult to [make them shorter]. You’re right, I like things to breathe and have their own space.

Audience Member

Hi. I am very interested in physics but I’m really uneducated.

Floating Points

This makes two of us. [laughs]

Audience Member

I was interested in the point where you were talking about your doctorate, and I was wondering what role do you think music plays in evolution? Because at this point I feel like a lot of music is meant to enforce capitalism in a way, it’s all about aesthetic. And I felt like a lot of the stuff you played was very emotive and very progressive, and I thought it was funny that nearly everything had a significant modulation, you said that the DNA had a modulation because of pain. And I was wondering if you could talk more about that even though you said you didn’t want to.

Floating Points

Okay. The thing that I was particularly interested in is called epigenetics, and so you’ve got your DNA code. It’s the four letters A, G, C, T, and for a long time it’s believed that that code defined everything about you, all your physical traits, where your nose is, the way your eyes are, you know, your hair color, things like this. Over the past maybe 50 years – I’m going to get so panned on nature of neuroscience for this – a field’s emerged called epigenetics, so it’s like the way in which that code itself exists within a cell. So the way in which it’s folded up, because DNA has to pack itself really, really tightly, and for that DNA to be turned into what is gonna turn into you, proteins, that it has to unfold and reveal itself and be made available to be read, like the doors of the library have to open. I was interested in the gatekeeper to that door, basically, and so we’re looking at tiny, tiny, little proteins inside cells that open the DNA and close the DNA up. We found in pain that those things change, doors open, doors close as well, different parts of the DNA, and so we’re trying to find a way of closing some doors and opening other doors to the DNA code to normalize the pain. The link to music, I’m sure I could waffle on for long enough before one emerges but I have not thought about it, sorry. Sorry.

Audience Member

Hello.

Floating Points

Hi.

Audience Member

This might be slightly presumptuous, but you seem quite, like, a restless guy when it comes to darting into new projects and leaving things behind, but you are evidently very dedicated as well. And I think this is kind of a question of the divides of dedication, and speaking of the Talk Talk album, and other peeps who invest a lot of time into a singular piece of work, how do you manage your über-considered projects alongside a route to being a prolific artist, and how do you balance those outlets?

Floating Points

You mean, having lots of interests in different kind of music, or in different things?

Audience Member

Yeah, or getting tired of work that you’ve done before or wanting to move on, and how long do you invest in each time?

Floating Points

Right. The thing that played right at the beginning, that’s something I started five years ago, and recorded actually most of it back then. In fact, the reason I played you the wrong mix is because literally I have no idea, I can’t remember. I just started working on it again, trying and finishing it off. I have lots of different things on the go at the same time, whether it’s dance music, whether it’s not dance music, and I don’t finish them all. Like I don’t start them and finish them in the same period of time, it’s a very protracted process. And most of the things that I’ve put out, actually, have been... I did a record called “Shadows,” it’s a double-pack. All the music on that, from the day it released, was at least two years old, up to nine years old, actually. That’s probably not answering your question.

Audience Member

Yeah, you definitely are. Do you abandon your music? Is that how you get it out? Do you know what I mean?

Floating Points

Yeah, actually you’re right. With that “Shadows” record, this one, putting it out was kind of like, “I’m done with it now.” A lot of my music is like that. I sit with it for a long, long time, and nothing changes, but suddenly I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to put out that one.” I wish I was a little bit faster [laughs] with deciding. I don’t know what it is, I think I just need to live with it for a bit, within myself, before I’m happy for other people to hear it.

Audience Member

That’s reassuring.

Floating Points

Yeah, there’s no rush, basically.

Audience Member

Hi. There is some kind of lovely and deep sense of distance in your music. I wonder how would you approach that space, not just in the technical way, also how do you visualize when you’re writing your music, that feeling? I also want to know, you mentioned a book when you just started the lecture, and I want to know the name of the book.

Floating Points

It’s by an engineer called Phil Brown and he’s still going, actually, still working. I think he recorded Dido’s albums, as well, and did some big, big pop projects. The book’s got tales of Bob Marley recordings with the Wailers, some really interesting acts in there, actually. It doesn’t get very technical, but it just so happened this one little nugget of information I was looking for was in there, the drum thing. Especially, yeah, with Talk Talk, he actually does go into detail. Talking about space... Technically it’s much easier to answer. Over the years, I’ve developed ways that feel comfortable to me to create space in a mix. So I listen to a lot of my old records, like “Vacuum,” for example, it sounds like one big blob of sound to me. But whereas the “Shadows” thing feels way more open and has a virtual space, every instrument has its own space in the mix. I think that’s mostly a function of getting an outboard mixer. For me, that’s technically what helped me. I used an API, it’s a mixing console, and it’s very easy to use because you can make the most tiny adjustments and you can hear them. And that hands-on approach gave me that sense of space. It’s something that I felt I wasn’t achieving in computer, from just a stereo out. Musically, a sense of space... Dynamics. I’m a sucker for reverb and good- sounding reverbs. I spend a lot of time listening to reverbs. The EMT plate is a very nice reverb, and there’s an AMS reverb, which is this one that I use in everything.

Benji B

They’re not small, though, are they?

Floating Points

The EMT plate, yeah. The thing is, you can get them relatively cheap, it’s just because no one’s got space for them. But, yeah, don’t try and lift it by yourself.

Audience Member

Is this thing on? Hello? Okay. I’m just riffing off of Cary’s question, I find it interesting, too. I come from an approach that’s more like a social approach to music, I want to relate on an emotional level. And I feel like when you just began talking about your doctorate, PhD, it evoked this sense of synesthesia in me. That’s what I connected to most, because that’s the physicality and the way the brain relates to physicality, is how I think about music. Like a shiver going over your shoulder, and then being distracted by your heart dipping lower when a certain thing happens in the music. I’m interested in hearing about how it makes you feel, why you do music, like... The emotional side, rather than what you use, you know?

Floating Points

Right, okay.

Audience Member

And whether you’d ever investigate that on an academic level.

Floating Points

I do feel something when I make music...

Audience Member

Oh, yeah.

Floating Points

Sorry, I don’t quite understand. Obviously, it’s much easier for me to answer those more technical things, and maybe me saying that making music was the sort of sense of release from doing daily science work was a little over- simplification. I need to make music to be happy.

Audience Member

It’s very evident in your music, that’s why I’m asking. Because it’s like the poeticism of your science is so beautiful, when I listen your songs.

Floating Points

Say it again?

Audience Member

It’s poetic, the science related to listening to your songs. It’s interesting that you don’t connect it.

Floating Points

Yeah. No, I don’t. [laughs]

Audience Member

It’s more of a discussion point than a question.

Floating Points

Right, I think you’ve thought about this more than I have actually. [laughs]

Audience Member

Say something!

Audience Member

Yeah.

Benji B

Any more questions? Going, going... All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Floating Points.

[applause]

Floating Points

Thank you.