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Techno comes in all shapes and sizes, and few recent outfits embody that truth more obviously than Berlinʼs Barker & Baumecker. One operates as Barker/Voltek and the other as nd_baumecker. Both solo projects exhibit unconventional takes on techno inflected by the influence of other genres, from glitch to dubstep to ambient and beyond.

Titled “Transsektoral”, the album name refers to the duoʼs ambition to travel across the entire spectrum of electronic music. Thatʼs what they do on the LP, bridging a seemingly impossible gap between the dubby blobs of ambient opener “Sektor” to the effervescent bubbling of the epic closer “Spur,” like happy hardcore unravelled and disassembled into a soothing afterword worthy of someone like Dntel.

These are machinistic creations that swell with organic respiration and lush life, despite their artificial origins. The album jumps from garage-leaning bouncy house with “No Body” to exuberant tonnes-heavy off- kilter house (“Buttcracker”) where bubbles of caustic acid send the track into overdrive - yet none of these shifts quite feel like the gigantic stylistic leaps they represent. Instead, theyʼre smoothed out into something altogether pleasant and listenable, the album itself sharing each trackʼs own gentle sense of development and build-up.

Thatʼs largely due to careful sequencing: for every stretch of twitchy funk like “Schlang Bang” - where hi-hats and snares swim against a sea of topsy-turvy basslines like in difficult backstrokes - or the pumping liquid grooves of “Trans_it,” there are brief but texturally rich interludes like the sleepy-eyed “Tranq,” which rumbles reassuringly below a palette of twinkling synths. The album has an ebb-and-flow that makes its eccentricities enjoyable rather than obnoxious. And eccentric it is, particularly on mid-album highlight “Crows” (reworked for the single “A Murder of Crows” earlier this year) where what sounds like a blaring horn fanfare lights the dark passage of rustling snares - a startlingly unexpected turn that quickly becomes natural.

By the time we get to the end of the album, the simmer becomes nearly unbearable and finally boils over with the aweinspiring “Silo,” the track that betrays the duoʼs Berghain heritage (Barker runs the clubʼs Leisure System night, Baumecker is a booker for the club and long serving resident DJ there), where hissing hats get lost in a wringer of ropy vicegrip basslines and violent whiplash kick drums. Itʼs almost the albumʼs one concession to conventionality. Itʼs a perfect distillation of the overall aesthetic that Barker & Baumecker reveal with “Transsektoral” - it makes perfect sense in execution, but put it on paper and itʼs nearly incomprehensible, not to mention sprawling. Itʼs enough to make you wonder what kind of magic they did to put it together in the first place.

TRACK LISTING

01. Sektor
02. Trafo
03. SchlangBang
04. Crows
05. Tranq
06. NoBody
07. Trans_it
08. Databass133⅓
09. Buttcracker
10. Silo
11. Spur