Audiopile Review: Six years after his debut release, Barker finally follows up Utility, his splashy debut of pointillist IDM euphoria that brought to life his now infamous DJ sets at Berghain. Arriving via Smalltown Supersound, who are on an incredible streak of releases right now, Stochastic Drift drills ever further into his signature precision craft and mood-lifting electronica that’s become increasingly difficult to slap with any simple genre tag. The album opens with a 1-2-3 punch that flexes his levelled-up design and complex programming, fluidly moving between the stuttered beats and dubby churn of album opener “Force Of Habit”, into the elated trance shimmer on “Reframing” and finishing off the trio with the clipping tonal ping-pong of “Difference and Definition”.  Elsewhere, he gets a little jazzy on the free floating wander of “Fluid Mechanics”, immersive and ambient on the mid-point breather “The Remembering Self”, and “Cosmic Microwave” is a gloriously intricate music box, brittle with glassy clarity and ripe with melodic overload. There are certainly comparisons to be made here to Four Tet’s ecstasy-fuelled crowd-pleasers, Squrepusher’s complex intensity or Plaid’s brain-tickling sound-worlds. But Barker is truly carving out his own space, the comparisons will only get you part of the way. 10/10. No skips.

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Barker’s debut album Utility (on Berghain’s Ostgut Ton label) was something of a sensation in the world of electronic music when it was released. Utility made numerous Best of 2019 year’s end lists, including Pitchfork (8,2 review), The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor (Recommends) and others. It also earned the title of Mixmag’s Album of The Year 2019. Now its finally time for the follow-up Stochastic Drift on Smalltown Supersound. And where Barker on Utility was “using ambient materials to remake techno” as Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne wrote, he takes this approach even further here creating – as the title suggests – a dreamy stochastic drift and beautiful freeform oat.