barker & baumecker: turns

Sam Barker and Andreas Baumecker's lives have always revolved around different kinds of music. That's partly why their productions as Barker & Baumecker are more unpredictable, harder to pin down than what you might expect from a label borne out of a techno club. And while their music is clearly built for dancing, listening to it reveals a deep love and respect for many forms of electronic music. Their second album, Turns, is an amalgamation of their unique musical minds, transcending electronic music genres and styles, while further developing and refining the Barker & Baumecker sound aesthetic. With two EPs, an album, and almost 20 remixes under their belt, Barker & Baumecker continue to steadily explore and reshape their shared electronic musical interests, especially in techno, bass, breaks, and experimental terrain. Talking about the title of the album, Barker explains, "the two of us have had quite a lot of ups and downs since the last record, and when you're in a collaboration where you only work together in real-time, in person, both people need to be in the right frame of mind." Baumecker adds, "Turns also had something to do with the tracks - almost every one turns towards the middle." While none of the tracks on Turns are merely functional, Barker & Baumecker do, of course, envision them in the club. There's nothing typical about any of these tracks, but they each share a clean aesthetic and sound palette with a sense of depth and compositional purpose. The ambient intro of album opener "Senden" morphs into a Reichian flow. The low-end drums of "Encipher & Decipher" weigh down the dreamy melodic synths. "Club Entropicana" reduces rhythm and sound to machine signals, akin to Raster-Noton's starkness. Both "Turnhalle" and "Nocturnal" incorporate trance euphoria with break-beats but in different ways, while closer "Statik" has a deliciously slippery garage pulse guiding it through a journey towards house bliss. Never knowing where they'll draw from next, Turns feels like Barker & Baumecker are expanding and refining their own musical dialect. Like most of the music they're both drawn to, it's thoughtful, rich, and ever evolving, but always and completely committed to the club.