Barker

Sam Barker, who records simply as Barker, spent the 2010s learning to subtract from the record before he ever asked what to add. His 2018 EP Debiasing removed the kick drum from techno's usual arithmetic, and the trick stuck: 2019's Utility and 2025's Stochastic Drift built on that absence, threading Euclidean rhythm patterns and probabilistic sequencing through tracks that pulse rather than pound. Berlin-based and a longtime Berghain resident, he co-founded the Leisure System label and also performs as one half of Barker & Baumecker, a duo built for the club's harder, more intricately engineered corners. His solo catalogue draws from bass music, dub, breakbeat, and ambient in roughly equal measure, and Stochastic Drift landed atop Mojo's electronic albums of the year. Outside the studio he designs instruments through his research platform Voltek Labs, treating circuitry and code as extensions of the same compositional instinct.