Not listening to the modern musical marvel that is Mere Mortals would be doing yourself the ultimate disservice.
Release date: August 28, 2026 | Deutsche Grammophon | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Website
Believe it or not, being chronically behind on music comes with its advantages from time to time. There once was a time when an album would be announced a typical amount of time prior to release and from then on, I’d agonizingly be forced to count the minutes until I could listen to it months later at midnight like a desperate ghoul. Now, barely having the mental capacity to even pay attention to what day of the week it is, albums are just dropping left and right and I only find out after the fact; this is exactly the case with Floating Points‘ latest collaborative effort with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestral, Mere Mortals. Although I am not typically one for instant gratification, it is indeed satisfying to be able to immediately immerse myself in a project as grandiose as this upon realizing that it even exists in the first place.
Sam Sheperd, the Ph.D.-level neuroscientist turned electronic musician known as Floating Points, does not shy away from conceiving ambitious, larger than life pieces of music that are beyond transcendental. The unforgettable Promises with the London Symphony Orchestra and the late Pharoah Sanders is direct evidence of that. The instant I was made aware that there was another such album, not just on the horizon but fully ready to feast my ears on as fast as my responsibilities would let me, I knew deep inside me that the impossible had not only been done, but it had been done again and across multiple dimensions this time around.
Mere Mortals isn’t a traditional piece of standalone music, like previous works in Sheperd’s catalogue, but rather a companion piece to what I am assuming to be a visionary ballet performance that was meticulously concocted with choreographer Aszure Barton and the 80-piece ensemble that is the San Francisco Ballet Orchestral. Given that I didn’t even know that this album existed until after it had already released, little did I know that this multi-dimensional work of art (extra emphasis on art) is conceptually a modern twist between the mythology of Pandora and the Pandora’s box (or rather jar, also pun intended) that is artificial intelligence.
Despite most people, such as myself, not having the pleasure of experiencing this live once-in-a-lifetime visual performance, at the very least we get to soak it all in purely through the music that exists on Mere Mortals. Whilst only getting to partake in one-half of the vision that Mere Mortals was made to be, the music itself is so incredibly immersive, venturous, and outright breathtaking that it allows you to vicariously witness such a performance at as close to full scale as can be; the only limiting factor that’ll determine how truly engrossed one gets from the music alone is the listener’s imagination, as the music gives you everything that you need to place yourself front row seat of this ballet performance from the comfort of your own home.
Much like theater performances that are meant to cycle the audience through the spectrum of human emotion, Mere Mortals does exactly that only having to enter through your temporal lobe and nothing else. “Fire” and “Hope” beautifully set the stage with some gorgeous musical exposition, only for the listener to swiftly be thrown into the absolutely discordant chaos that is “Rage of the Gods” (the track lives up to its name). This song in particular was and still is immensely stressful to listen to; the first listen had my bowels loosened for its full duration. Towards the end of this track, there is a steady, lingering cowbell that creeps in and continues onto the following movement as well as appears later onwards in other songs. Latching onto that consistent, familiar rhythm whenever I hear it deep in the background is equal parts comforting and unsettling (as in “Falling to Earth”).
“Zeus’ Command” leading into “Pandora’s Creation” is a more Sheperd-driven sequence, featuring delicately textured, electronic effects fluttering in and out of your subconscious, which is much needed to destress after “Rage of the Gods”. The latter of these two songs takes you through a triumphant sequence with bombastic brass and energetic string accompaniments. It feels as if you’re witnessing the very instant the universe snapped into existence out of thin air that didn’t even exist itself until that precise moment in time (time that also didn’t exist until then…). The sheer scale of this song alone is almost enough to actually convince me that there may actually be greater forces out there beyond our own comprehension.
What Sheperd and company have put together is something so deeply rooted in organic textures and human emotion as much as it feels celestial and blissfully otherworldly. Throughout the entirety of this album (referring to Mere Mortals as just an album feels like heresy), you’re taken through mystery and intrigue, melancholy and quiet catharsis, and utter shock and awe. The album ends in a cliffhanger-of-sorts, representing where we are at as a society with this political hellscape that we’re living in so deeply intertwined with the AI boom; I’m not quite sure I want to know what happens next. The end result is one of those musical experiences that has me staring at a wall for ten minutes after the final note rings out when I should be giving it a standing ovation instead. It is a stark, humbling reminder that we are mere mortals after all. Goddamn it Floating Points, you’ve done it again.
