It’s Sunday night in Manhattan at Irving Plaza, and Dan “The Automator” Nakamura takes the stage behind a mouthwatering wall of synths, across from Kid Koala [Tape Op#159] and his three turntables. Deltron 3030 is back to rock the same stage where they made their New York debut 25 years ago, and the place is mobbed. If you were a hip-hop fan at the turn of the 21st century, Dan The Automator most likely blew your mind on numerous occasions. After...
Interviews
Floating Points
By John Baccigaluppi
Although I had heard of Floating Points, the project of London-based musician Sam Shepherd, it was the 2021 album Promises – made in collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra – that captured my attention, and I wrote about it in the End Rant ("One Degree") of Tape Op#160. Through mutual friends, Stella Mozgawa [Tape Op#169] and Suzanne Ciani [#148], I met Sam a few years ago, and we ended up doing some cycling and surfing together. In April of this year, Sam was back in town and working on a film soundtrack at my Panoramic House Studio during the day and performing Mere Mortals at night with the San Francisco Ballet (eleven shows over nine days) using a large modular Buchla 200 system with a 70-piece orchestra. We managed to meet up for a chat on a Saturday morning in San Francisco, a few hours before a matinee performance with the ballet.
