Stochastic Drift

by Barker

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jūken In the top three of 2025. Simply bursting with interesting ideas and brain-tickling sounds. The stuttering, clattering title track arrives at the end as a welcome surprise and perfect finale. On the whole, this release is simultaneously chill and invigorating: a walk in a snowy wood on a sunny day in early spring.

tenorless best ambient album i've heard since the last barker LP. Favorite track: Force of Habit.

Cone Focuses less on Trance than its predecessor album, although in return you get some well composed Cosmic Jazz to compensate. Favorite track: Positive Disintegration.

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New autumn 2025 pressing! Ships from the EU or US.

Includes unlimited streaming of Stochastic Drift via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

$30 USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
New autumn 2025 pressing! Ships from the EU.

Includes unlimited streaming of Stochastic Drift via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

$30 USD or more
LP (clear)
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Stochastic Drift via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

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1.	Force of Habit 06:18	buy track
2.	Reframing 03:59	buy track
3.	Difference and Repetition 04:24	buy track
4.	The Remembering Self 06:07	buy track
5.	Positive Disintegration 05:35	buy track
6.	Cosmic Microwave 05:37	buy track
7.	Fluid Mechanics 04:48	buy track
8.	Stochastic Drift 06:26	buy track

about

"On his second LP, the Berlin-based musician opens himself to chance and presents a vision of techno that harnesses randomness for all its potential. He emerges a more remarkable musician than ever."
- Pitchfork (Best New Music)

"For all its cerebral themes and complex processes, Stochastic Drift never once falls victim to stiff inaccessibility. Perhaps it’s the human element driving its reflective, evolutionary spirit, but Barker’s bright avant-electronica resonates with a kind of healing energy, a feeling that can come from unburdening the weight of expectation and just going with it."
- Bandcamp Daily (Album of the Day)

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’d been working with an approach that was quite deliberate and goal-oriented before, but I realised this wasn’t so helpful in the context of uncertainty. Being suddenly unemployed and stuck at home for an indefinite amount of time, with one disruption after another, it was like the target kept moving and I didn’t know what to aim at.” Barker reflects. “I noticed this unpredictability starting to creep into what I was making, and tracks were ending up a long way from the intentions they started with. So the challenge for this record was to try to embrace that process, to let go of expectations.” 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: “My interest in mechanical instruments is not to replace a human performer, but to explore the tool in a different way, maybe dehumanize it a little bit and look for the potential outside of what humans have already perfected.” Addressing anxiety about the influence of automation 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 wanted to explore the link between my internal and external realities, between the chaos of the time and how that was manifesting in my music and ideas,” Barker says of Stochastic Drift. “It’s a transition between lots of shifting realities, 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.

credits

released April 4, 2025

Written and produced by Sam Barker
Mastered and cut by Stefan Betke
Artwork by Kim Hiorthøy

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about

Barker Berlin, Germany

shows

Oct 18

The White Hotel

Salford, UK
Oct 30

Village Underground

London, UK

discography

Stochastic Drift

Apr 2025
Unfixed

Aug 2023
BARKER002

May 2021
Utility

Sep 2019
BARKER001

Jun 2019
Debiasing

Jun 2018

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