7 July 2025

The Sunflower Sound System continues its journey across Europe with an upcoming appearance at Amsterdam’s Dekmantel Festival on August 1–3

At Glastonbury’s Silver Hayes last month, renowned electronic artist and neuroscientist Samuel Shepherd, better known as Floating Points, showcased the latest iteration of a deeply personal design experiment: the Sunflower Sound System. Part sonic architecture, part engineering marvel, this bespoke audio system marked a new milestone in artist-led sound design, turning heads not just for its output but for its conceptual and material depth.

First unveiled at Project House in Leeds in 2024 and later making its festival debut at GALA London this May, the Sunflower Sound System has steadily grown in scope and precision. With each deployment, the system evolves; modularly configured, rigorously tuned and informed by a lineage of high-end audio philosophies. For Glastonbury, the design arrived in full bloom.

The system draws influence from both UK and US sound system traditions. “The system [at Cosmic Slop in Leeds] is run by this guy Tom Smith, who I call Cosmic Tom,” Shepherd told Beats In Space host Tim Sweeney. “He got deep with it and did all the carpentry himself – with some help from old-school New York guys who built, you know, Paradise Garage, those mythological systems. Tom’s system is the best in the UK, hands-down. The midrange is beautiful. The feeling you get in that space is fantastic.”

Informed by this lineage, the Sunflower is no off-the-shelf setup—it’s the result of years of meticulous calibration, prototyping, and collaboration. Shepherd joined forces with designer Carlos Figueroa (aka fig. G) to develop the structure and spatial dynamics of the system, working with aesthetics, woodwork, and acoustic dispersion principles to craft a portable venue-within-a-venue. There are echoes of NYC’s SBS Slammer designs in its build ethos: precision, fidelity, warmth.

“Whenever I DJ, I have to psych myself up a little bit,” Shepherd explained. “Discovering new music is the easiest way to get that feeling of, ‘I can’t wait to play this loud on a system.’ That’s one reason I wanted to build this. I’ve spent so much time in all these different clubs. Eventually, I was like, ‘I need to build a sound of my own that has the power that I want. I need to build the room I want to play in.’”

With eight full stacks confirmed for his upcoming appearance at Amsterdam’s Dekmantel Festival on August 1–3, the Sunflower Sound System continues its journey across Europe, carrying with it a manifesto: that great sound isn’t just heard, it’s designed.