|||||||||||||||||||| (barcode) at Outernet
Going underground to discover an enigmatic German musician
If you’ve been to Tottenham Court Road recently, you’ll have seen the recurring images of butterflies, skulls and the cosmos being projected onto the walls of a semi open-air space dubbed ‘Outernet’, just across the road from the station.
It's a sort of quasi-VR experience for tourists, on par with Shrek’s Adventure or Madame Tussauds. I recently read an article that questioned why we’re still being taken in by these banal and bombastic light shows, when gigs, galleries or full blown virtual environments are so much more immersive. As luck would have it, one such venue was close to hand…
Amongst the guitar shops and trendy establishments of Denmark Street, The Lower Third cocktail bar was built as part of Outernet’s broader ambition to develop a new West End entertainment district. It's a literal underground venue which hosts intimate, grass roots shows, in the shadow of its 2,000 capacity counterpart ‘HERE’, where you can expect a full blown rave.
Someone asked if I was waiting for the secret Charlie XCX album launch party rumoured to be kicking off nearby. I shook my head. I was there to see enigmatic German producer |||||||||||||||||||| (pronounced ‘barcode’). If that sounds like a pretentious name then it probably is, but his work transcends navel-gazing or pointless experimentation.
Barcode’s subtle, jazz infused compositions are driven by ambient static and fluttering lo-fi beats. By combining the true American art form with home listening electronic music, the German native has carved himself a niche that is cold and mechanical, yet heartbreakingly delicate. As with Autechre or Nathan Fake, his melodies hold power because they are embellished by industrial noise, not in spite of it.
Before the concert I was half expecting to see a live band. This speaks to the organic nature of barcode’s work, as well as his restraint when it comes to socials and streaming platforms. There have been a series of stand alone tracks on Bandcamp and Spotify, with very little to go on should you wish to put a face to the name.
The artwork for each release is just a block of colour, which would suggest a desire to remain anonymous and aloof, but barcode was happy to mill around in the audience before and after his set, even announcing that he would stick some ambient on to give everyone a chance to mingle when the lights came up.
Barcode is not alone when it comes to weird, non-alphabetical names. Four Tet, a superstar DJ by comparison, uses indecipherable monikers like ‘⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺ’, and has recorded under the binary code ‘00110100 01010100’. Elsewhere indie-rockers ‘!!!’ have limited their own success by choosing a name that is pure punctuation.
Having descended the dimly lit stairway into the venue proper, it became apparent that this wasn’t going to be your average club night. Barcode used his time on the buttons to build an abstract, hypnotic atmosphere that was at times challenging and opaque, but always beautiful. He creates art for art's sake, operating in a substrata milieu where it really is all about the music. This was a far cry from Charlie XCX.