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Utility

by Barker

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      €10 EUR  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    1. Paradise Engineering
    2. Posmean
    3. Experience Machines
    4. Gradients Of Bliss
    5. Hedonic Treadmill
    6. Models Of Wellbeing
    7. Utility
    8. Wireheading
    9. Die-Hards Of The Darwinian Order

    Includes unlimited streaming of Utility via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €15 EUR or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited BioVinyl repress, which provides an ecological alternative to the conventional vinyl record with strictly no sound or visual compromises.

    Shipping starts end of September 2023!

    A1. Paradise Engineering
    A2. Posmean
    A3. Experience Machines
    B1. Gradients Of Bliss
    B2. Hedonic Treadmill
    C1. Models Of Wellbeing
    C2. Utility
    D1. Wireheading
    D2. Die-Hards Of The Darwinian Order

    Includes unlimited streaming of Utility via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 17 days
    2 remaining
    Purchasable with gift card

      €26 EUR or more 

     

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Posmean 03:54
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Utility 04:30
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Wireheading 02:19
9.

about

“We all dance away our lives to the tune of the sovereign pleasure-pain axis.”

– David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative

Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance as a rave metaphor fits the music of Sam Barker. The Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas.

This was especially true on his 2018 Ostgut Ton debut EP ‘Debiasing’, which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody and percussion but devoid of kickdrums.

Now, on his debut solo LP ‘Utility’, he turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the musical decision making process. ‘Utility’ is a playful but non-ironic musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and transhumanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and “gradients of bliss” to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology.

Over nine tracks his vision ebbs and flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms as targeted brain stimulation. The sound draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional and utopian.

credits

released September 6, 2019

all tracks written and produced by Sam Barker

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Barker Berlin, Germany

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