Melina Duterte began recording her own music armed with little more than a laptop, a budget mic, and a fascination with how records are made. As Jay Som, she crafted a distinctive sound defined by textural, layered guitars, and soft, intimate vocals. Since then, Duterte has expanded into producing, engineering, mixing, and touring with artists such as Boygenius, Hatchie, Lala Lala, and Fenne Lily, all while continuing to refine her own approach to...
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.
