Anekdoten's Nicklas Barker releases new solo album Epektasis

Nicklas Barker in a cabin-studio
(Image credit: Sophie Linder)

Anekdoten frontman Nicklas Barker’s new album Epektasis is available now from Tonbad Grammofon. 

It is the second release on new record label Tonbad Grammofon, that was founded by Barker and Sophie Linder in 2021 and is dedicated to contemporary electronic, ambient, experimental and psychedelic music. The label’s first release, Kosmogon’s Mässan, was released last August. 

Epektasis sees Barker exploring minimalist, ambient sounds and features six tracks of shimmering, minimal, electronic soundscapes. It was recorded over two weeks in September 2021 in Stockholm and the mountain village of Åre using two mellotrons and an ARP Odyssey synthesiser. A palette of vintage keyboards and percussion through four looping devices, culminating in the summoning of celestial voices with meditative drones, in soothing infinite mysticism.

“This music is rooted in the works of post-war, experimental, minimalist and electronic music composers such as La Monte Young, Eliane Radigue, Tony Conrad and Paulina Oliveros,” Barker says of Epektasis. “All of whom have had an enormous impact on me through the years.”

Epektasis is available now on vinyl, CD and digital. 

Epektasis tracklist 

1 Himlarymderna
2 Offret
3 Celest Mekanik 
4 Mörkret På Berget
5 Klingande Solar 
6 Klara Skyar

Hannah May Kilroy

Hannah May Kilroy has been writing about music professionally for over a decade, covering everything from extreme metal to country. She was deputy editor at Prog magazine for over five years, and previously worked on the editorial teams at Terrorizer and Kerrang!. She currently works as the production editor for The Art Newspaper, and also writes for the Guardian, Classic Rock and Metal Hammer.