Floating Points surprise-releases Mere Mortals, a ballet album about Pandora

Floating Points has released Mere Mortals without warning, an album that is also a ballet score. The production of the same name gets its European premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival on the evening of August 28, the same day the record went up through Deutsche Grammophon.

The ballet retells the myth of Pandora, the woman who opened the box and let evil into the world, and Sam Shepherd's reading of that story is the argument behind the music. "If you look at how her story was translated over time, she was completely stripped of her agency and kindness," he says. In his version, Pandora represents curiosity and change rather than punishment.

The piece was commissioned by Tamara Rojo, artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, with choreography by Aszure Barton, and it debuted in 2024. Working to choreography is a different discipline from making a dance record, and it puts the structure of the music at somebody else's disposal.

The ending refuses to resolve. Hope escapes Pandora's jar only to circle a planet already reduced to ash, and the album closes on a track called "Nowhere to Land." Shepherd singled out the violin playing of Cordula Merks, saying hearing what he had written on the page transformed by her performance made him want to write more.

For a producer whose name is attached to club records and to the orchestral collaboration with Pharoah Sanders, a commissioned ballet score is a logical next step rather than a departure. It also arrived in a busy week for him: he turns up as a contributor on Turnstile's Never Enough: Versions, released the same day.

The album is filed under electronic, and its date sits on the release calendar. Composed and orchestral work has been a steady thread in our coverage, from Anthony Hopkins releasing an album of orchestral works to Satoko Fujii putting out the first of at least five orchestral albums this year.