Like a feather within the wind or the worldwide inventory market, all of us are topic to stochastic drift. Originating in superior statistics, the time period refers back to the method wherein randomness works upon a system, how the trajectory of a line sways because it’s affected by unanticipated occasions. For Sam Barker, the metaphor of a winding path has been significant in recent times.
After an prolonged interval as a label runner and live performance booker, the Berlin-based musician entered the highlight with 2018’s Debiasing EP and 2019’s Utility, two data that articulated a weightless, kick-drumless imaginative and prescient of techno. What ought to have been a dizzying ascent was lower brief by the pandemic: tour cancelled, label shuttered, and hard-won contacts with reserving brokers damaged off. At his lowest second, the artist crammed out paperwork at a job middle and weighed leaving the music trade behind. “It was fairly outstanding how the rug may very well be pulled from every little thing in such an all-encompassing method,” he mirrored in an interview with Tone Glow. “This made it fairly laborious to interact in a rule-based or goal-based strategy as a result of it appeared like each purpose was altering from one week to the subsequent.”
Barker’s second LP, Stochastic Drift, is each a synthesis of his wilderness years and an exciting inflection level. In a area of good ambient techno producers, he’s delivered his most dazzling and definitive assertion so far. The strict parameters that guided his early data’ zero-gravity rush have dissolved into freeform experimentation, permitting his tracks to billow and burst because the temper calls for. Throughout the album, Barker blurs analog and mechanized devices into gauzy clouds, jazzy ambiance, and chic percussion. He navigates extremes, toggling between aural chaos and hyper-mediated know-how by harnessing randomness for all its energy.
On early solo releases, Barker dedicated himself to limiting his personal expertise with an depth that will make Brian Eno blush. In interviews, he may sometimes sound like a level-headed startup founder, phrasing his concepts by way of inputs and outputs and making a cool but impassioned case for techno disruption. The distinction was that Barker was involved with scrambling expectations fairly than optimizing outcomes. Taking inspiration from engineering, chance idea, and social psychology (and titling most tracks after associated ideas), he set utilized sciences to a dancefloor pulse. The frequently cresting trance of “Hedonic Treadmill” or “When Prophecy Fails” was a product of limitation, ingeniously making up for the tracks’ lack of thump with pillowy texture, glassy melodies, and ceaseless ahead movement.
