Jonah Engel Bromwich

But the 33-year-old’s new album, “Crush,” out Friday, was jostled from him in five weeks, fueled by his frustration at the state of the world, by “searching for hope and not being rewarded,” he said in a phone interview that started in a taxi from King’s Cross in London and continued in his Shoreditch studio.

Shepherd’s sensitivity to suffering and those who aim to alleviate it — the new track “Sea-Watch” was inspired by Carola Rackete, the German ship captain who was arrested after defying Italy’s attempt to close its borders to the some 40 migrants she had rescued — has long been part of his intellectual exploration. When he moved to London for his doctorate, he studied neuroepigenetics, specifically the role DNA plays in neurons that encode pain.

“I still do think about pain and the academic side of things and the fact that its one of the principal unmet clinical needs of the world,” he said. “It’s still deeply misunderstood, deeply maltreated.”

His musical education began in his hometown Bolton, near Manchester, when he was 8 and became a choirboy at Manchester Cathedral. After his voice dropped, he studied composition at Chetham’s School of Music. He was drawn to French composers Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, detecting in their music the fascinating harmonic contrasts that brought him to the work of the impressionistic jazz pianist Bill Evans. Shepherd was particularly taken with Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” written while the composer was captive in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

“The actual story behind that piece of music is as effective to me as the music itself,” Shepherd said. “Just the clarinet, it just kills me every time I hear it.”

When he was working on his doctorate in London, his hunt for compelling music led him to Plastic People. The club was an incubator for some of the most forward-thinking sounds in dance music, and Shepherd fell in with two like-minded musicians, Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and Dan Snaith (Caribou); the three remain close. “That’s like the three musketeers, there,” Shepherd said.

Snaith said he believes a big shift between Floating Points albums has been the evolution of Shepherd’s studio, which has had a massive impact on his creative process.

“Sam only works when he feels inspired,” he wrote in an email, “and I know that finally having all these amazing pieces of equipment set up — easy to use, chain together and experiment with — was a big catalyst to this music.”

Hebden emphasized his friend’s engagement with the world. “We’d talk about something happening in the news that day, and then he’d go spend a day in the studio,” funneling it into music, he said. “That’s just the way it works, as far as I know.”

Another change came with a lesson Shepherd learned on the road after he released the jazzy, warm “Elaenia” and toured with the xx. He had been listening to the Krautrock group Harmonia’s concert album “Live 1974” and decided to try something similar onstage with a Buchla modular synthesizer, a complex, keyboard-less instrument usually used in the safety of a studio.

“I don’t know where the confidence to do something like that came from,” he said. “Playing Buchla music to 20,000 people without knowing my gear that well. Even I was like, ‘That was mad.’ ”

But the experience gave him a better understanding of the Buchla, an instrument that grants a detail-oriented musician like Shepherd extraordinary control over the sounds he’s creating. Now, “Rather than spending loads of time producing a record, I’m spending loads of time learning the equipment that I make the record with,” he said.

That helped when it came time to record “Crush,” which Shepherd wrote, arranged and composed. The opening track, “Falaise” which features a string ensemble, a French horn and several woodwinds, was written with the goal of taking a “normal ensemble” and treating the parts as building blocks of a modular system.

The album is significantly harsher and heavier than earlier Floating Points music. Several songs dwell on Shepherd’s anger about the destruction of the planet. On “Environments,” the music — a blend of synths and drum machine — seems to spin almost out of control. “I think part of that is rage,” Shepherd said. “Let it burn, you know.”

Shepherd has unending admiration for artists who make political music. He enthused about “We Almost Lost Detroit,” Gil Scott-Heron’s exploration of the 1966 partial meltdown at a nuclear plant in Monroe County, Michigan.

“The lyrical content is like, wow,” he said, adding that he knew about people like activist Karen Silkwood because of Heron.

“Crush” gave him his own canvas for political expression. And he spent such a comparatively short time making the record that he even likes listening to it.

“It’s imperfect,” he said. “But it doesn’t bother me.”

This article originally appeared in

Floating Points, Electronic Music's King of Pain

Since he emerged as one of the standout DJs at the London club Plastic People in the late aughts, Sam Shepherd, who makes slow-building, deliberate electronic music as Floating Points, has become known for his precision, his musical knowledge and his modesty. “Elaenia,” his 2015 debut album, took five years to make. He tends not to enjoy his own work.

<h1>The day that Prince died in April 2016, Spike Lee threw a celebration of his friend’s life. On a brick townhouse-lined street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, hundreds of people gathered in the street, as Lee blasted song after song from the steps of his building. He played deep cuts and greatest hits, as neighbors wept and sang along into the night.</h1>

Nearly three years later, Lee is honoring Prince Rogers Nelson again, bringing a man he calls his brother into the spotlight as he celebrates his movie “BlacKkKlansman.”

On the Academy Awards red carpet Sunday night, Lee wore a custom-made gold, diamond and opal necklace in the form of the symbol Prince adopted as his name. It was made by jewelry designer Amedeo Scognamiglio, and was paired with an all-purple Ozwald Boateng suit and gold Jordans made by Tinker Hatfield (and commissioned for Lee by Michael Jordan himself).

“I told Ozwald to make my pants high-waters so they see the Jordans,” Lee said in an interview a few days before the Oscars, in remarks adorned by profanity and punctuated by excited laughter. “I don’t care what nobody’s wearing. I win the Oscar on the red carpet. Men, women, I don’t care if they’re wearing 15-inch heels. They can’t be messing with the Jordans I’m going to be wearing. I’m going to be as clean as the board of health. I’m going to be sharp as a razor.”

Scognamiglio first met Lee about a year ago and the two have become friends; the director can often be seen sporting the artisan’s oversized jewelry.

“My business partner and I, we like to design very chunky pieces, big looks,” Scognamiglio said. “We don’t do dainty.”

Still, when he was making Lee’s necklace — the outsized 18-carat gold pendant is framed in diamonds, and has a 17-carat fire opal at its center — he thought it might be running too big. He called the director to ask his opinion. “Make it bigger,” he said Lee said. “Make it bigger.”

Lee and Prince first met when the musician, impressed by the director’s 1986 debut feature film, “She’s Gotta Have it,” flew him out to Paisley Park in Minnesota, around the time that Prince was working on the film “Graffiti Bridge.” There was an immediate sense of understanding between the two men. They remained close, despite not seeing each other very often.

“It might be six, eight months before we talked but when we talked it was like, we see each other,” Lee said.

The last time he saw his friend was after a performance of the musical “Hamilton,” Lee’s seventh time seeing it.After the show, Lee said he went backstage and cast members told him that they were going to an after-party hosted by Prince.

“It was a book party, so he invited the whole cast of ‘Hamilton,'” Lee said of Prince. “So I get there and it’s just him and a DJ. And Damaris Lewis, who was dancing. And that was the last time I saw him. We sat and talked like an hour and then he got up on stage and played for like another two hours and he was giving me shout-outs on stage, stuff like that.”

Lee believes that the musician’s spirit helped him to find the version of “Mary Don’t You Weep,” sung by Prince, that plays at the end of “BlacKkKlansman,” as scenes from the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, conclude the film. (The film represents the director’s first chance to win an Academy Award for either Best Picture or Best Director.)

The song was recovered by Troy Carter, a friend of Lee’s who is an adviser to the Prince estate (and who also used to manage Lady Gaga). Carter called Lee and told him that among the thousands of disorganized cassettes that the musician had left behind, one had been found that featured just Prince and a piano.

“I said to myself, this is it,” Lee said. “What could be more fitting than to have a Negro spiritual sung by Prince, just him and the piano in this movie.”

He does not think that finding the tape was a coincidence.

“It was not a mistake,” he said. “Prince wanted me to have that song in BlacKkKlansman. People can say I’m crazy, smoking crack, which I don’t. Or eating the mushrooms, which I don’t. I’m telling you, on my mother’s grave, he wanted me to have this song.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="3eaabf6f-9605-452e-a607-0eb75e30a47a" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/style/prince-symbol-spike-lee-oscars-gold-jordans.html">The New York Times</a>.

Spike Lee's Tribute to Prince at the Oscars

Nearly three years later, Lee is honoring Prince Rogers Nelson again, bringing a man he calls his brother into the spotlight as he celebrates his movie “BlacKkKlansman.”

Spike Lee's tribute to Prince at the Oscars

<h1>Brandon Truaxe, founder of the disruptive Canadian cosmetics company Deciem, has died. He was 40.</h1>

The death was confirmed by a spokeswoman at Estée Lauder Cos., which has a minority stake in Deciem, and in an Instagram post by the company. Vox initially reported Truaxe’s death.

Toronto police would not confirm the death. A spokeswoman, Katrina Arrogante, said that police had responded Sunday to reports of a sudden death at Parliament and Mill streets, an intersection in the distillery district. The address that Truaxe gave as his apartment was on Mill Street between Parliament and Cherry streets.

“We are incredibly saddened by the news of his passing,” the Estée Lauder Cos.’ statement said. “As the visionary behind Deciem, he positively impacted millions of people around the world with his creativity, brilliance and innovation. This is a profound loss for us all.”

News of Truaxe’s death came after a year of unusual behavior from the Deciem founder, much of which was displayed on social media. In Instagram posts on the company’s account, Truaxe canceled the company’s marketing plans and canceled company partnerships.

Executives began to leave the company in response to Truaxe’s odd behavior, including Stephen Kaplan, the company’s chief financial officer, and Nicola Kilner, his co-chief executive, who said her employment was terminated by Truaxe. (She rejoined the company in the summer.) Kaplan later explained that he had departed “because Brandon’s demeanor had changed following a December vacation in Mongolia.”

Then, after a relatively quiet period, Truaxe announced in October that Deciem would shut down its operations, claiming, as an aside, that virtually all of the company’s employees had been involved in “major criminal activity.”

The investors interceded, asking a judge to remove Truaxe from the company to stop him from hurting the business. “He has essentially lit the company on fire,” a lawyer representing the brand said at the time. The company’s application to oust Truaxe was granted, and management of Deciem was ceded to Kilner.

After he was removed from the company, Truaxe’s odd behavior continued, up to and including the days immediately before his death. On Saturday, he posted four videos to his Instagram account, attempting to give tours of his apartment. In them, he gave out his address and apartment number.

“I’ve had a little bit of alcohol to drink tonight,” he said in the second video. “It’s the perfect Saturday night to spend on your own. I love you guys,” he said in the third. The fourth video was addressed to “Mr. President,” presumably meaning President Donald Trump, whom Truaxe frequently and enthusiastically discussed on Instagram.

Before 2018, Truaxe was seen as an eccentric but successful visionary for his work with Deciem. One of the company’s brands, The Ordinary, was particularly beloved by customers, selling skin care ingredients a la carte at a fraction of competitors’ prices.

This article originally appeared in <a id="d4d3bcd7-74dc-4e17-bec8-bc6835d44dc9" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/style/brandon-truaxe-dead.html">The New York Times</a>.

Brandon Truaxe, visionary beauty entrepreneur, is dead at 40

The death was confirmed by a spokeswoman at Estée Lauder Cos., which has a minority stake in Deciem, and in an Instagram post by the company. Vox initially reported Truaxe’s death.

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Jonah Engel Bromwich

Articles written by the author

Floating Points, Electronic Music's King of Pain

Spike Lee's tribute to Prince at the Oscars

Brandon Truaxe, visionary beauty entrepreneur, is dead at 40