Four-panel culture comic: a producer with ballet slippers and a Mere Mortals album, Edinburgh festival lights, a woman opening a jar of glowing questions, a violin beside a track called Nowhere to Land. — Four panels: score as album, Edinburgh tonight, curiosity not doom, Nowhere to Land. · Comic: Topics / Drew’s Comic Newsroom. Source: Pitchfork, Aug. 28, 2026.

Culture and Curiosity

Floating Points put Pandora on a ballet, then on an album

Floating Points, the recording name of Sam Shepherd, has released Mere Mortals, the score to a San Francisco Ballet piece of the same name. Pitchfork says the European premiere was Friday, Aug. 28, at the Edinburgh International Festival. The album is on Deutsche Grammophon.

The ballet, choreographed by Aszure Barton and commissioned by Tamara Rojo, retells Pandora. The usual version is the woman who opened the box and let evil out. Shepherd’s read is the opposite of the scolding: later tellings stripped her of agency and kindness. “She really represents curiosity and change.”

The ending stays mournful. Hope leaves the jar and circles a planet already burned down. That cue is the album closer, “Nowhere to Land.” Shepherd says hearing violinist Cordula Merks play what he had written on the page made him want to write more.

A surprise album that is also a program note: myth, agency, and a last track that does not land.

Source: Pitchfork