Barker has achieved one thing uncommon along with his weightless techno experiments: a sound that’s immediately identifiable as his personal. His signature trick, perfected on 4 deliriously pretty information for Berghain’s label, Ostgut Ton, is to think about dance music with out the kick drums. And the impact, finest loved on headphones, is a full dunking into the bliss abyss.
Barker has usually talked about working with particular guidelines within the studio, and his new single “Reframing” sounds rather a lot prefer it was made this manner. A nebula of unhappy synths and space-dust percussion floats excessive above a easy metronomic tick, its personal rhythm slowly turning into unmoored from the beat, a bunch of balloons misplaced to the heavens. However like a ’60s phase-shifting experiment, the sample inevitably finds itself again the place it began, locked into the heart beat once more. It’s arising, it’s arising… like an enormous techno drop with a brainy twist, the payoff pairs the minimalist logic of Steve Reich with the emotional heights of trancelord Sasha. Barker’s forthcoming new album, Stochastic Drift, is supposedly an train in embracing the random. It’s a stunning thought—the ovoid orbits of “Reframing” don’t appear to have emerged by chance. However you might say the identical for many objects within the identified universe.
Correction: An earlier model of this evaluation incorrectly acknowledged that Barker’s actual identify is Sam Voltek. The producer’s identify is Sam Barker.
