Goldenvoice’s Head Trip, the third offering in the Coachella promoter’s rare time capsule series (after Desert Trip and Power Trip), is a two-day electronic music summit scheduled to take over the Empire Polo Club in Indio this weekend.
The cast includes the biggest names of the genre such as Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia, Fisher + Chris Lake, Skrillex, Peggy Gou and Four Tet. But even among such top talent, the truest audiophiles know this: real The main title is listed at the bottom of the brochure: “Floating Dots Sunflower Sound System.”
Ten years in the making, this eight-cabinet, horn-laden, round custom monolithic wood speaker rig will serve as the second stage of the show. Introduced just two years ago and built for just four festivals, versions of the sound system have been played at famous European events Glastonbury in the UK and Dekmantel in Amsterdam.
Head Trip marks the North American debut of Sunflower Sound System.
Sam Shepherd, who performs under the name Floating Points, said: “DJing isn’t about playing bad records. It’s about playing bad records in a system that matters.” “You’re in control of something incredibly powerful, like a powerful weapon, and you have to tame it and use it to draw the audience in and bring people together. I think that’s the art of DJing.”
Close-up of the speakers on the Sunflower Sound System.
(Alex Heuvink)
After performing in clubs around the world, chatting with people who built the systems he used, and taking notes on their designs, he decided to start Sunflower Sound System. He was influenced by his favorite venues and the people behind them, including the now-closed Plastic People in London, Paradise Garage in New York and the Cosmic Slop in Leeds, a club for local young people that funds the city’s Music and Arts Production Charity.
Shepherd soon realized that he would have to build the system he wanted himself, and he teamed up with club owner and DJ Tom Smith, also known as Cosmic Tom, who offered to help. They accumulated a stockpile of equipment from systems they liked and kept them in a warehouse for years. Some were easy to get. Others, such as Japanese speaker drivers, were produced in only small numbers per year.
Finally, the cabinets were designed and built with plywood to exact specifications by a team of carpenters. They brought in experts Tim Pennells and Michael Parker (the latter is currently Harry Styles’ sound engineer) to handle the electronic engineering. Things turned around when they found an affordable, quality-sounding amplifier. The team built a demo pair, then went “full turbo” and built eight more.
Everything fits into three shipping containers, humidity-controlled with silica gel buckets. The system was packaged and shipped via the Panama Canal to the American side, where Shepherd and a small team reassembled the system.
Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, says: “DJing isn’t about playing bad records. It’s about playing bad records on a system.”
(Genevieve Reeves)
At Indio, the Head Trip tweeters will be a new design and the Sunflower Sound System will be performed in a darkened tent for the first time.
“I started texting some friends like, ‘I’m doing this in the desert, I’m bringing the speakers. Are you interested?’ And it came together pretty quickly,” Shepherd said of the cast, 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 vowed not to make the system any larger, although he wanted to build “a really big submarine”. He would also like to see more live bands on the system, like Dekmantel. Shepherd said that while he isn’t looking to host an event of his own, he can see the system supporting his festival.
“I’m just dipping my toe in… It’s still an experiment for me,” he said. “That’s why I’m so excited to have Goldenvoice help me with this because they believe in artistic enterprise.”