Barker

The British-born, Berlin-based artist Sam Barker has long sought to push the boundaries of electronic music, in and out of the club. Looking beyond the realm of 4/4 techno to explore left-field sound design and rhythmic complexity, the Berghain resident’s string of signature solo releases for the club’s Ostgut Ton imprint and Smalltown Supersound have explored the rhythmic functionality of pumping, twisting and constantly evolving modular electronics. These popular releases and live performances have earned Barker widespread acclaim from the underground to the mainstream and everything in-between, both off and on the dancefloor.

After an intense, fruitful period of experimentation and conceptual development, Barker released his solo debut EP Debiasing on Ostgut Ton in 2018, containing four hypnotic and kick-less dancefloor experiments based on research into behaviorism and cognitive bias. This was followed by his solo debut album Utility, a playful but intentional musical approach to translating a spectrum of transhumanist ideas, packed into a deeper exploration of the emotive potential of rhythmic ambient electronics and – once again – almost entirely without kick drums. Both releases were received by many as instant classics, helping to define a discrete category of ambient dance music. Utility made numerous Best of 2019 year’s end lists, including Pitchfork, The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor and others. It also earned the title of Mixmag’s Album of The Year 2019. As Philip Sherburne wrote in his Pitchfork review: “For anyone who has ever fantasized about dissolving into the dancefloor, Utility is about as close as it gets.”

These releases were followed by two limited-edition white label EPs for Ostgut, BARKER001 and BARKER002. In 2023, he released the Unfixed EP on Smalltown Supersound, followed by another limited-edition white label 12" on the label in 2025, Cosmic Microwave / Stochastic Dynamics In Non-Linear Systems. In April 2025, Barker released his second full-length Stochastic Drift. Inspired in part by Euclidean and probabilistic patterns as well as the chaos and uncertainty of the preceding years, it emerged from a place of vulnerability that announced itself in the music's emotional impact. Boomkat celebrated the album as unfolding "like a galaxy-brained afters playlist…Barker's relentless research and development makes his music as fluid and mutable as his palette." In their Best New Music review, Pitchfork's Harry Tafoya described it as "his most dazzling and definitive statement to date." Stochastic Drift was also named Mojo Magazine's #1 Electronic Album of 2025. 

Whether performing live solo or as part of a group, DJing on his own or B2B, Barker combines bass music, techno, electro, breakbeat, dub and ambient elements that coalesce into a distinctive, future-facing vision. He is one-half of Barker & Baumecker with longtime Panorama Bar resident nd_baumecker, with whom he has released multiple EPs, two albums and dozens of remixes. And his expansive approach to unorthodox musical exploration has led to ongoing live collaborations with the likes of Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske, alongside Speedy J, Rødhåd and Sebastian Mullaert in the shapeshifting live improv outfits Stoor, WSNWG and Circle of Live, installations developed with creative computer programmer Kay Sievers / Versio Duo, and remixes for the likes of Martin Gore, Tangerine Dream, JakoJako, and Planetary Assault Systems.

It's a perspective also reflected in his curation of the Leisure System label and Berghain club night of the same name, which held the longest residency in Berghain's history. Launched in 2008, with the label following in 2009, Leisure System has since released seminal works by the likes of Dopplereffekt, Objekt, JakoJako, and Visionist, among many others. 

In addition to his recorded music, live sets, and DJing, Barker is an active instrument designer who combines coding skills with analogue, electric and acoustic instrument construction for his experimental archive and platform Voltek Labs. In the summer of 2020, he contributed a large-scale sound installation, Piano-1, to Berghain’s Studio Berlin art exhibition, featuring a self-playing piano performing generative serial compositions named Attune, which emphasize democratic harmonic relationships between tones. He has also delved deep into constructing his own MIDI-triggered acoustic instruments, including a prepared plate reverb and various percussion instruments, notably used to explore the resonant architecture of Detroit’s empty, abandoned factories with Underground Resistance’s Ray7. In August 2024, Barker collaborated with Kay Sievers / Versio Duo on the Discrete Ensemble installation, at the Neuenationalgalerie in Berlin, built around a set of eight MIDI-controlled mechanical string instruments called Viola-1. In September 2025, he performed alongside Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske for Atonal Festival in Berlin, with further live and studio collaborations for the pair on the horizon.

Barker’s musical focus continues to be on the peak-time dancefloor potential of ambient music as he works on another album and label. Operating on the periphery of club music, he continues to shift its center.