Barker

Berlin-based producer and DJ  Barker (aka Sam Barker) announces Stochastic Drift, his new album out April 4th via Smalltown Supersound, and presents its lead single, “Reframing.” Following 2023’s Unfixed EP and his first full-length release since his 2019 debut album Utility, Stochastic Drift builds on Barker’s singular process to capture life’s chaos and reflect on just how much has changed. If his previous records showcased the artist “using ambient materials to remake techno” (Pitchfork), Stochastic Drift pushes Barker’s approach even further into harmonic chaos and dreamy freeform float. 

Utility, the fullest expression of the beatless techno experimentation Barker excavated on his cult classic Debiasing EP, arrived to critical fanfare from The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor, and Mixmag (who named it their Album Of The Year). The years since the release of Utility have been marked by intense unpredictability: Barker’s own shifting attitudes towards production, moments of professional transition and, not least, a global pandemic, necessitated somewhat of a reinvention. 

Stochastic Drift sees Barker creating tracks with a fresh deftness and appreciation for the unexpected. “I started noticing that this unpredictability was starting to creep into the music I was making,” Barker reflects. “At some point I became conscious of the process, that actually, the only thing you can do is just embrace the uncertainty and try to see every change as a potential positive.” The serotonin-spiking lead single “Reframing,” titled after psychological technique for reinterpreting a situation in a positive way, unfolds like a brittle reimagining of Sasha’s eternal prog trance standard “Xpander” until it begins to drift through uncharted territory. 

Throughout Stochastic Drift, Barker dives deeper into the world of mechanical instrumentation. Barker explains: “I’m not trying to replace a drummer with a cheap alternative. It’s more a tool to explore the instrument in another way, to extend the potential of it, to maybe dehumanize the instrument a little bit and ponder its potential beyond what humans have already explored.” Addressing anxiety about the influence of AI in music making head on, Barker emphasises that, regardless of the technology implemented and how this might enable the artist, machines of all sorts, be they robots, synths or instruments, are simply tools. It’s the creative act that remains resolutely human.

“I was trying to draw a link between creative and social parallels, between what was going on in my life and how that was manifesting in the music,” Barker says of Stochastic Drift. “It’s a transition between lots of different goals, describing a process in a window of time that was full of change.” As though finding comfort in unpredictability, the artist pieces together a new sound and in so doing finds a salve for uncertainty.