On April 22 2016, the day after Prince passed, I experienced the audio magic of Despacio for the first time. The custom McIntosh-powered sound system is the brainchild of three icons of technology-driven music: James Murphy, lead singer of LCD Soundsystem, and David and Stephen Dewaele, better known as Soulwax and 2manydjs. This trio DJ vinyl-only sets in Despacio.
This was the first time Despacio came to Coachella. When I made my way into the custom-built tent, the curation inside was even more relieving than the air conditioning subduing the dry desert heat. The seven speaker stacks surrounded a circular lighting rig directing attention towards a planet-sized disco ball hanging from the ceiling, which, moments after I entered, was lit purple when they played the inimitable classic, Purple Rain.
To me, this was the closest anyone could get to hearing Prince himself sing this song again. Standing in the centre of this dialled-in surround sound environment, with the sound of vinyl running through a custom-built Industry Standard analogue rotary mixer into Despacio, we may as well have been in the studio while the pride of Minnesota recorded the song 40 years ago.
Since then, Despacio returned to Coachella in 2023, and has landed on the lineup poster for other festivals, including This Ain’t No Picnic, III Points, and Portola. In 2026, a true hi-fi experience is as appealing on a lineup as any artist.
“It’s honestly a fucking blast,” says Danny Bell. As Goldenvoice’s SVP of talent, he oversees artist bookings at Portola, Club Darc, and many other Goldenvoice events. “People really value good sound. No one ever has been to a show with amazing sound and said, ‘If only there were more lights or video.’ But if the sound isn’t good, it could ruin shows with the biggest production. It just goes back to the basis of this being all about music, and sound is number one always.”
Bell is also behind Head Trip, the one-off dance festival at the Empire Polo Club, where Coachella has taken place since 1999. In addition to giant headliners such as Swedish House Mafia, Skrillex, and Calvin Harris, Bell secured the first North American appearance of Floating Points’ Sunflower Sound System.
Sunflower is Floating Points’ (real name Sam Shepherd) latest hyper-intricate project, following his ballet with the San Francisco Symphony, Mere Mortals, and his orchestral album Promises before that. Recent as it may seem, Shepherd has been working on the system for over a decade. He and Tom Smith, co-founder of the hi-fi-driven, Leeds-based club night, Cosmic Slop, scoured the globe for different components until they found the precise combination they needed to hand-build these 14-foot-tall stacks.
Having played Coachella and Portola multiple times, Shepherd and Bell had become friends. So, when Shepherd was in San Francisco in August 2025, he invited Bell over for dinner to discuss the idea of bringing Sunflower to the US.
“There are some people who are just interested and intrigued by things. That’s how they end up going down this rabbit hole of actually building something like this [and] spending the time to source every individual piece,” Bell says of Shepherd. “He told me all about the speaker cones and the various places they went to look at them, the exact tweeters that they got, what year they were made, and why it mattered that they were made that particular year, because a certain wire or product changed the year after.”
Bell has an equally important role in this process because Sunflower needs a room built to calculated specifications on the festival grounds. After hosting Despacio multiple times and the Yuma tent (Coachella’s on-site nightclub) since 2013, Goldenvoice has developed soundproofing walls that can be arranged in any size and shape.
“We have an in-house team that can build anything. That’s what makes it fun,” Bell says. “You can’t just put these systems anywhere. You put it in the room with the wrong materials on the wall, and it will fully impact the experience.”
Coincidentally, III Points never has to worry about having the proper room for such a sound system. When the festival started 13 years ago, it was in just one building, which is now the venue called Black Room at Mana Wynwood. This space used to host film productions for major motion pictures such as Charlie’s Angels and Transformers, and then the first III Points hosted DJ Shadow, Jamie xx, and James Murphy.
“The second you walk into it, your ears change. It’s like when you put noise-cancelling headphones on,” says David Sinopoli, founder of III Points. “You can play something in here and truly hear it. That room really was the heartbeat of the festival, because it’s where we started, and it’s also a very special room with the treatment that’s on the walls.”
As the festival grew to its current haul of over 13 stages, headliners such as Charlotte de Witte started performing at massive outdoor spaces, but Black Room was still where Sinopoli highlighted special acts. Björk performed a DJ set there, MF DOOM performed before he passed away in 2020, and when Despacio came to III Points, Sinopoli and the team realised it was the perfect size for the sound system’s specifications.
“We got lucky, or it was meant to be. It seems like it is the home for the Despacio,” says Luca Sabatini, Technical Director for III Points.
III Points first hosted Despacio in 2023 and booked it again in 2025. But after that first year, its clientele was so excited about a room with sound as the headliner that Sinopoli and Sabatini saw fit to design their own audio-forward experience for the Black Room: the :444: stage. This concept debuted in 2024 and will return this year.
Three artists play four hours each with an all-L-Acoustics system comprising 66 components, including six from the brand-new L-Series. It also has the added colour of L-Acoustics DJ, which uses machine learning to break stereo tracks into different elements for manoeuvrability around a spatial audio system. Either the DJs themselves can man the technology during their sets or III Points can provide a member of their tech team to run the software.
While Bell and Sinopoli acknowledge the growing interest in high-quality sound both at festivals and in public establishments like vinyl bars, they agree that the sound serves a larger whole: the environment.
Bell describes Despacio as Murphy and the Dewaeles’ “dream club environment,” noting that most people have never been in such a highly curated music space: “Walking into this environment where that attention to detail has been predetermined, it’s unique. It’s different, and it creates a sense of community, because the sound is so clear and crisp. The sound is the focal point and the thing that really ties it all together.”
Despacio also uses its design to encourage a more communal experience. The circular lighting rig beckons people towards the middle of the room while Murphy and the Dewaeles view everything from a small window. They are not the focus. The dancefloor is.
“A truth that our generation can pass on to the next generation is to stop staring at the DJ and start staring at each other,” says Sinopoli, going on to describe the different kinds of human-to-human experiences that such a space offers. “It’s a respite spot. It’s never overpacked. You can go there and be part of the music. Be in the back. Smoke a joint. This is an opportunity for people to have an intimate moment with somebody they love.”
And in order to ensure those moments are properly curated, the final piece of the puzzle is, of course, the DJs. For Desapacio, this isn’t a factor. No one else DJs in there besides Murphy and the Dewaeles. :444: and Sunflower have a rotating cast, but the philosophy, according to Bell and Sinopoli, is identical:
“Everyone has to be a master,” Sinopoli says.
Bell elaborates, “It’s all about selectors, right? People who really care for this. There’s a purpose for each one. [Shepherd] knows these artists would not only appreciate the opportunity to play on the sound system, but they would do a lot with it.”
At Head Trip, Shepherd will be joined by Ben UFO, Four Tet, Zach Cowie, Theo Parish, Eris Drew B2B Octo Octa, and Avalon Emerson, but there won’t be any set times published. The people are going for the experience as a whole, not just for a singular DJ.
This is where :444: has contrast. When Sinopoli is booking the stage, his programming is intentional. The earliest slot, 4-8 pm, is more about selecting tracks rather than building a dance music set. Then for 8-12 am, that’s for building the energy from listening into dancing, and then the closing 12-4am slot is pure club hours. This year, the breakdown is Heidi Lawden starting on the first day, followed by DJ Harvey, with Floating Points closing. The next day is Willikens and Ivkovic opening, then Red Axes, then Seth Troxler.
“We can’t put anybody that’s not a master in there, because it is a room where you have to come equipped to really hold a 4-hour set,” Sinopoli says. “Seth and Floating Points are known to be able to pick up the pace and be able to really rip it. So, it’s a lot of curatorial filters that go on to even who can be in :444:.”
Murphy and the Dewaeles demonstrated the sound system’s impact with Purple Rain. To be at a festival after the death of one of the most legendary musicians in history, a certain emotion hangs in the air. It’s like a reminder of their influence on everyone performing (not to mention Prince himself headlined Coachella in 2008).
It was a rare moment where a recording could be just as powerful as a human performance, and that’s thanks to the sound system and the environment designed specifically to house it. Sinopoli and Bell take pride in creating the opportunity for thousands of people to experience those moments.
Harry Levin is a freelance journalist with credits in SPIN, Billboard, MusicTech, Grammy.com, Los Angeles Magazine, and more. His musical journey began 20 years ago with a Led Zeppelin CD. He played jazz trombone through college, produced large-scale electronic music events, and now spends his professional time writing and editing.
