Goldenvoice’s Head Trip, the third offering in the Coachella promoter’s infrequent time-capsule series (following Desert Trip and Power Trip), is a two-day electronic music summit slated to take over the Empire Polo Club in Indio this weekend.
The lineup is stacked with some of the biggest names in the genre, featuring Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia, Fisher + Chris Lake, Skrillex, Peggy Gou and Four Tet. Yet, even among such top-tier talent, the truest audiophiles know the real headliner is listed at the bottom of the flier: “Floating Points Sunflower Sound System.”
A decade in the making, this eight-cabinet, horn-loaded, in-the-round custom rig of monolithic wooden speakers will act as the show’s second stage. Unveiled just two years ago and constructed for only four festivals, versions of the sound system have played at famed European events Glastonbury in England and Dekmantel in Amsterdam.
Head Trip marks the Sunflower Sound System’s North American debut.
“DJing’s not about playing wicked records. It’s about playing wicked records on a system,” said Sam Shepherd, who performs under the name Floating Points. “You’re in control of something that is incredibly powerful, like a powerful weapon, and you need to tame it and use it to engulf the audience and bring people together. That’s the art of DJing, I think.”
Close-up of speakers in Sunflower Sound System.
(Alex Heuvink)
He was driven to build the Sunflower Sound System after performing in clubs around the globe, conversing with the people who built the systems he was using and taking notes about their designs. He was influenced by some of his favorite venues and the people behind them, including the now-shuttered Plastic People in London and Paradise Garage in New York, and Cosmic Slop in Leeds, a club that funds the Music and Arts Production Charity in town for local youth.
Shepherd soon realized he would have to build the system he wanted himself, so he teamed up with club owner and DJ Tom Smith — known as Cosmic Tom — who offered his help. They amassed a stockpile of equipment from systems they liked and stored them in a warehouse for years. Some were easy to get. Others, like the Japanese speaker drivers, were only made in small numbers per year.
Eventually, the cabinets were designed and built with plywood to precise specifications by a team of carpenters. They brought in experts Tim Pennells and Michael Parker — the latter is currently Harry Styles’ sound engineer — to run the electronic engineering. Things turned a corner when they found an amplifier with quality sound that was cost-effective. The team built a demo pair, then went “full turbo” and built eight more.
Everything fits in three shipping containers, which are moisture-controlled with buckets of silica gel. The system was packed up and sent through the Panama Canal to get Stateside, where Shepherd and a small team will reassemble it.
Floating Points, a.k.a. Sam Shepherd, says, “DJing’s not about playing wicked records. It’s about playing wicked records on a system.”
(Genevieve Reeves)
In Indio, the tweeters for Head Trip will be a new design, and for the first time Sunflower Sound System will be staged in a blacked-out tent.
“I started texting some friends like, ‘Doing this thing in the desert, bringing the speakers. Are you interested?’ And it came together pretty quickly,” Shepherd said of the lineup, which includes Floating Points, Four Tet, Ben UFO, Avalon Emerson, Theo Parrish and more.
With Head Trip on the horizon, what comes next could go in many directions. He’s promised not to make the system any bigger, though he does want to build “a really big sub.” He also wants to see more live bands on the system, as they did at Dekmantel. Shepherd said he could also see the system support its own festival, though he isn’t looking to produce an event on his own.
“I’m just dipping my toe in.… It’s still an experiment for me,” he said. “That’s why I’m so psyched that Goldenvoice are helping me out behind this, because they believe in the artistic venture.”
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
