The Best Thing Since Chocolate Marmite

Starring

Adam Camm, Barker, Chrissie Hynde and Pals, Kuma, Madi Diaz, Magnetic Skies, Mt Misery, My Raining Stars, The Suncharms

Stochastic Drift : Barker

Best for : People who like their music to stem from science rather than art.

This is, in a good way, an interesting album nestling in the sweet spot where intelligent dance music meets ambient. Freed from the need for furious beats, it's an enjoyable listen.

It's an album that feels as if it draws on science and maths more than art. For example elements like the deliberate timing of the beat in 'Reframing' rest on precise calculation to take you by surprise. The balance between the metallic notes of 'Force of Habit' and its more chiming, plunked notes sounds like the product of experimentation to hear what works.

There's perhaps some random chaos theory at play in how the separate pieces fit together. They called to mind an electronic jigsaw of similarly shaped and sized pieces scattered across the floor with no picture to guide you to the correct assembly. And in those circumstances, you may discover new magical combinations. It's a strange sensation to hear music that could be as individual as the sound of blood coursing around your body or as universal as the sounds that come from across galaxies.

Scientific it may be, but it's a kindly, gentle science with a heart. Tunes slowly unfurl like a sleeping child stirring towards wakefulness before settling back into sleep under the watchful eye of their parents,.

Towards the end something surprising occurs. You hear it in 'Fluid Mechanics' as it gently washes over you, a lovely demonstration of how Barker can take a jazz bass and make it all his own or in 'Stochastic Drift' where jazz drumming is absorbed as if all the percussion in the album has fallen through the tracks to settle in the final number.

I'm left feeling that Barker's take on music bears the same relation to ambient electronica, as The Cinematic Orchestra or Thievery Corporation bore to the chill out genre with which they were lazily packaged at the beginning of the 21st century.

Taster Track : Fluid Mechanics