In a Volatile World, Barker Is Trying New Things—And Loving It
An interview with the Berlin-based artist, who talks about kick drums, DJ culture, trance, live jams and how uncertainty shaped his forthcoming new album.
Less than five and half years have gone by since Barker released his widely acclaimed Utility album, but considering all the upheaval the world has gone through since then, September of 2019 practically feels like another lifetime. The pandemic obviously had a lot to do with that, and caused all sorts of personal and professional upheaval for the Berlin-based British artist, but even before the lockdowns subsided and some sense of normality resumed, Barker couldn’t help but notice that his attitude toward so many things felt profoundly different. The music industry, DJ culture, his own creative practice … everything had shifted, and what initially seemed like an obvious plan—to continue exploring the no-kick-drum template that had made both Utility and its similarly adored predecessor, 2018’s Debiasing EP, such special releases—no longer felt like the right way to go.
Finding a new path, however, is easier said than done, and Barker’s decade to date has largely been filled with experiments. Although he’s long been known as something of a gear hound and studio wizard, he’s expanded his practice to include instrument building, even putting some of his new creations to use at different sound installations in Berlin. Turned off by the current state of DJ culture, he’s doubled down on live performance, and as for his recorded output, the pandemic-induced pausing of Ostgut Ton prompted Barker to not just find a new label home, but also take his music in new directions. His first release with Smalltown Supersound, 2013’s Unfixed EP, was specifically rooted in the exploration of the kick drum—the exact opposite of what he’d successfully done on Debiasing and Utility.
Earlier this month, Barker announced the forthcoming release of a new album, Stochastic Drift, and though it’s not totally divorced from the gauzy textures of his previous work—the first single, “Reframing,” is directly (and not inaccurately) compared to Sasha’s trance classic “Xpander” in the promo blurb—it also shouldn’t be mistaken for Utility Part 2. What is it exactly? The aforementioned promo text isn’t all that clear, making repeated reference to “uncertainty” while employing terms like “reinvention,” “change” and “unpredictability,” the latter being particularly eyebrow-raising considering the degree to which Barker is generally thought to be such a process-oriented artist.
Curious to find out more, I asked Barker if he’d be up for an interview, and over the course of a long call last weekend, we talked at length about the new album, and how it was shaped by the chaos we’ve all experienced over the course of the 2020s. Barker may be an electronic music lifer—aside from being a devotee of the genre since his early teens, his work with Leisure System dates back to 2008, and he was also one half of Barker & Baumecker (alongside Andreas Baumecker), who released a stellar string of records during the 2010s—but our conversation made clear that he’s not content to coast on his reputation or simply go along with the status quo. He shared some pointed critiques of both contemporary DJ culture and streaming, but what was perhaps most surprising was his unbridled enthusiasm for a potential alternative to the average night out: a nascent, fast-growing scene of improvised, long-form, multi-player jam sessions. As the title of his upcoming LP implies, Barker has come to embrace a certain degree of randomness, though that doesn’t mean he’s blindly taken his hands off the wheel; when things start to go out of control, he’s simply learned to lean into the skid.