format: do 12inch vinyl / cd/ digital
label: mute records
cat.#: STUMM476
release date: nov 18th 2022

Tracklisting:
1. Cenote (7:46)
2. Grauer Sand (4:06)
3. Alp (6:15)
4. Stechmück (7:00
5. Firmament (6:02)
6. Tempus (5:44)
7. Allermannsharnisch (7:54)

Tempus – The tense of a verb group is its form, which usually shows whether you are referring to past, present, or future time.

“This is a natural development to the last album,” says Pole’s Stefan Betke. “One which goes further and is even more complex.” 

2020’s acclaimed album Fading, from the pioneering German electronic artist – who also re-released the era-defining trilogy 1,2,3 that year – was about coping with dementia and the loss of memory over time. Betke’s follow up, Tempus, is an album that considers the connection between the past, present and future.

It’s a natural topic to explore, not only because of the connection it clearly has with the themes explored on Fading, but because all of Pole’s work has an interconnectedness that spans past, present, and future. While each Pole album – his catalogue glides across ambient, dub, jazz, glitch, and electronica – is distinctly singular in its own right, the albums are part of an ongoing evolution that link as much to history as they do to the future. “My work is based on keeping elements from the past and developing them into the here and now,” Betke says. “It’s always based on trying to expand my musical language, so you will always find old elements but you will always find new. This is a step forward from Fading, and is connected to it, but it is also connected to all of my records.”

Musically, the album is also one that avoids easy categorisation, and Tempus exists in a unique space. The production is rich and enveloping, exuding dense yet crisp atmospherics on the opening ‘Cenote’, with drum sounds so punchy and dynamic you’d be forgiven for mistakenly thinking Betke was playing a real kit. This striking balance between complexity and compactness continues throughout.

As ever, the presence of dub within Betke’s idiosyncratic framework of electronic music, is a constant. However, its function perhaps takes on a more significant role in the context of this record. The dub effect units used in Pole’s music delay sound, keeping them a step behind the present before they are released and then they fade away again into a foggy reverb. The pace, tone and echo of dub effects are themselves traversing the essence of past, present and future within the album.

It’s also one of the most overtly jazz-leaning records in Betke’s career. However, given his inclination to do things originally, it’s a kind of deconstructed, mutated and manipulated form of jazz. The sparse drums and weaving basslines of ‘Alp’ possess an almost industrial jazz tone, while the closing ‘Allermannsharnisch’, with understated yet striking keys hovering over crisp beats, veers into a subtle yet experimental jazz territory.

However, despite the neatly executed concept and nuanced themes that run through the record, Betke is still willing to embrace mistakes and accidents. In the same way all his records connect, they also share the accidental feel that gave birth to the project as a whole (Pole being named after a broken Waldorf 4-Pole filter that gave him such a distinct sound.) Here, on ‘Stechmück’, you hear a strange, eerie, almost unsettling wailing sound that rings out above the bass-heavy beats. “That is the sound of my dying Minimoog,” Betke says. But instead of re-recording it, he incorporated the sound of a failing piece of electronic equipment into the heart of the song, thus giving it an entirely new tonal dimension.

The painting on the cover, by Wolfgang Betke titled Großstadtwanderer, links into the themes explored on the album. “It’s oil on canvas and what I really like is that, in a very similar way, it is super complex like my music,” says Betke. “I found the whole atmosphere in this totally weird confused head with these little shimmery eyes leaking through the colours to totally fit the idea of Tempus.”

Pole’s ongoing musical evolution, while retaining a relationship to previous work, means that he is already naturally building an ever-stronger bridge between the present and the past. However, the deeply innovative sounds that he continues to carve and explore, and always breaking new ground with each record, means that bridge is also being extended far into the future.

Pole Tempus is released by Mute on 18 November 2022 on vinyl, CD and digitally: https://mute.ffm.to/poletempus

format: 12inch vinyl / digital
label: mute records
cat.#: MUTE630
release date: aug 13th 2021

Tracklisting:
1. Tanzboden (6:36)
2. Rost (6:02)

The new track originates from a series of loops created during the recording sessions for his first new album for Mute in over 15 years, Fading, which was released in November 2020. Fading was about loss of memory and how memory disappears over the years as we grow older, and these loops were discovered when Betke had returned to the original recordings. He explains, “I began working in my Berlin Studio, doing research and listening to the single recording sessions of Fading to remember what I did exactly and to find out what I think about the recording months after finishing it.”

Stefan Betke continues, “Tanzboden is an old fashioned word for a dancefloor constructed during the harvest time, mostly outdoors, and Rost is the German word for rust which is an interesting connection to Tanzboden. If the dancefloor is not really used for a long time anymore it starts to rust, and as the screws and metal plates which are holding the wooden parts together disappear slowly over the years, so does the Tanzboden itself.”

The two tracks both link back to Fading and at the same time mark the beginning of new recordings. “Listening to them with a new album in mind, I liked them even better!”

Tanzboden was released August 13th 2021: https://mute.ffm.to/tanzboden

format: 12inch vinyl / cd/ digital
label: mute records
cat.#: STUMM458
release date: nov 6th 2020

Tracklisting:
1. Drifting (8:36)
2. Tangente (5:08)
3. Erinnerung (6:44)
4. Traum (6:10)
5. Tölpel (4:26)
6. Röschen (6:12)
7 Nebelkrähe (7:54)
8. Fading (5:31)

“Unfortunately there’s not a new piece of gear that broke making this album,” laughs Stefan Betke. “I don’t think that will ever happen again.”

Betke is referring to the origins of Pole and how accidentally dropping and breaking a Waldorf 4-Pole filter gave birth to both the name and distinct sound of his solo electronic project.
His opening trilogy of albums 1,2,3 were a benchmark moment in electronic music, with him seamlessly traversing across glitch, dub, minimal techno, ambient and electronica. Reissued by Mute earlier this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary, the trilogy reaffirmed its game-changing status in contemporary music. In their 5* review, The Observer called it “calming, abstract, minimal genius.”

To neatly solidify this year of Pole, Betke is also back with a new album Fading – his first since 2015’s Wald. As with every new Pole record, it’s part of a continued forward trajectory but it also connects to a pre-existing sonic framework. “Every Pole record connects to recordings that I’ve made before,” Betke says. “In order to stay in this kind of vertical development. The ideas from 1,2,3 up to now are connected. I keep the interesting elements, languages and vocabulary that I designed and add new elements.”

The idea of exploring one’s own history is also loosely linked to the inspiration for this record. “The album was mostly inspired by the idea of memory loss,” he says. “My mum had dementia and I saw her losing all the memory that she had accumulated over her 91 long years. When losing that memory it turned into what she was probably like in the beginning of her life when she was born – like an empty box.”

A concept album this is not however. The role of memory loss and his mother was simply a springboard for Betke, an idea to further explore through sound. “It was the motor for moving in this direction,” he says. “So for the opening track, ‘Drifting’, there is the idea of a whole lifespan that starts pretty empty and it gets fuller and then it ends with this kind of bell sound in the background. Or ‘Fading’, the last track, deals with the idea of fading away and disappearing slowly. But you always leave something. You leave a feeling or an image or an atmosphere. Everybody who lives leaves something on this earth.”

This approach gave Betke the opportunity to reconnect with his own memory and past. “You can hear some little pops and glitches in the background of this recording, which is a direct reference to the trilogy,” he says. “But you hear it relatively quietly in the background, it’s not really too heavily featured. This is a little bit of a sign from me, as my history is fading away slowly too.”  

However, much like the subtlety of Betke’s past can be heard hissing and popping away like a faraway echo, the idea behind this album is to be considered more of an inspirational underpinning than a set-in-stone theme. Pole’s music has always been multifaceted, blurring lines, genres, tones and Fading is no different. ‘Tölpel’ melds immersive crackles with bass-heavy beats, ‘Tangente’ unfurls via subtle yet unpredictable pulses, whilst ‘Nebelkrähe’ manages to simultaneously feel intimate and richly warm yet also endlessly airy and spacious. “’Nebelkrähe’ is really one of my favourites because it is so heavy but has so many details in the background,” Betke says. “It also probably has the most direct connection to the trilogy.”

Due to the multifaceted nature of Betke, the end result is an album that feels as suited for immersive headphone listening as it does to being pummelled out through a PA loud enough to feel the bass rattle your ribcage. This has always been key for Pole. “Whenever I compose a piece of music it has to have this element to it,” he says. “I need to be able to listen to it in the car when I go to the seaside or in my living room or in a club. The main idea is to make music that is multifunctional. From the beginning onwards, that was always the idea.”

As someone who also runs a mastering studio for disc cutting and digital mastering
(scapemastering), the tone of the album was understandably something Betke spent a lot of time on. “I think it’s a really warm-sounding record,” he says. “I go really deep into the sound design. I was very focused on the depth of it. Instead of having 15 four-minute tracks I was more into focusing on 8 long pieces that actually sink in. I wanted to fill your head up with atmospheric sounds. I really try to avoid overloading the tracks. It has to be on this thin edge between just enough information to keep things interesting but not too many ideas that it gives the impression it could be two separate tracks.”

Pole may have begun life with the embrace of an accident but over the years it has morphed and transitioned into a finely tuned and honed project with a deft yet potent sense of evolution. However, accidents are still something to be cherished in Betke’s world; the striking artwork for the album being a prime example.  “During a super heavy thunderstorm my TV broke down and I couldn’t see anything for 10 minutes,” he says. “As my screen was trying to recover it looked very strange. Immediately I felt the need to get my camera. I took hundreds of pictures and when I was going through the photos I saw these three where there are people coming into the image and fading out at the end. They look like oil paintings, and the fading away process is remade in the trilogy of these photos.”

So the presentation of the final album merges a perfect blend of considered craft with an unpredictable accident – much like the trilogy that started all this off.  “I have a sense for mistakes,” he says. “I see a mistake coming. It was the same with the broken filter all those years ago. Everybody said, get this fucking thing repaired, it doesn’t do anything’. I said, ‘no, no, no, no’”.

Fading was released by Mute on 6 November 2020: https://mute.ffm.to/Fading

format: 7 inch vinyl / digital
cat.#: PL14
release date: 29.01.2016

Tracklisting:
a: lurch (version) (3:49)
b: lurch (version – peder mannerfelt remix) (4:20)

A Limited 7″ release by POLE including a remix by PEDER MANNERFELT!

After his album „WALD“ pole releases a version of his track „Lurch“ which was available as bonus download track in Japan only.

The flip side includes an exceptional stripped to the bones remix by Peder Mannerfelt (Roll The Dice, Subliminal Kid)
Limited to 300 copies!

format: double 12inch / CD / digital
cat.#: PL13
release date: sept 11th 2015

Tracklisting:
Akt 1:
1. Kautz (5:23)
2. Salamander (4:44)
3. Moos (live) (6:46)

Akt 2:
4. Myzel (6:05)
5. Wurzel (live)(5:40)
6. Aue (live) (6:01)

Akt 3:
7: Käfer (5:21)
8. Fichte (4:23)
9. Eichelhäher (4:55)

The vinyl version includes a free Digital Download Code.

Your Download Code consists of 10 digits:

Your Download Code consists of 9 digits:

“Wald” begins immediately, ends abruptly, and is divided into three acts over three tracks. It is the first studio album under Stefan Betke’s Pole moniker for eight years – not counting the three 12″ EPs under the title “Waldgeschichten” (released in 2011/2012 and which were something like preliminary studies for this new album). Eight years is half an eternity in the digital age – yet the pieces on “Wald” seem timeless, or to have fallen from time. Stefan Betke: “After Steingarten I was on tour for two years. At the same time, Barbara Preisinger and I set up our record label ˜scape. Those were two hindering circumstances that were not exactly conducive to a creative restart.”

And it is indeed intended as a new beginning: “I couldn’t have really added anything new in the wake of “Steingarten” and the dub declensions I had made in previous years.” Yet repeating himself was not an option. And in waiting for inspiration to strike, there was an urgent need for the required “headspace”, or as Betke puts it: For the mind to be clear enough that a new beginning could occur naturally, without being forced. (A number of pieces had been written, according to Betke, but were discarded because he detected a kind of automatism that needed to be overcome. Perhaps he’ll listen to them again some day).

Over several years, long walks in the woods preceded the resumption of the production of his own material: “Walks through the Isar valley, but also through the forests in the Alps.” He was essentially waiting, applying patience, and viewing life as battery which needs to be recharged. But he immediately corrects himself: “Just waiting is also not a solution. You have to go through life with an open mind and with extended antennae. If something strikes you and inspires you to create new music, then it will be for a reason – enough of a reason to follow that inspiration under any circumstances.”

For Pole, it was the forest: its spatiality; the above, below and beyond; the horizon, offset by the vertical axes of the trees. “With previous albums, the city was that forest. Inspiration came from a walk through Berlin or Manhattan, where I could hear or see or read something and then understand that it is possible to continue.” So the forest was where Pole found the urge to “transcribe” that nebulous feeling into music.

On “Wald” it is manifested, for example, in raw sounds (act 2) and in psychedelic structures (act 3), which sound as if they might be guitars (but are actually distorted synthetic lines). Above all, at the turn of the decade, Pole conceived an idea as his sparring partner, which initially enabled him to release Waldgeschichten 1, 2 and 3 and to then spend three years working on Wald. From the tangible experience of the forest, a rather abstract question emerges: “How can I take what I have seen or felt and make it audible?” This question becomes a narrative, a story line. The initial story is that Pole went into a dialogue with his instruments, and the second story can be heard in the three acts of Wald.

The new compositions on Wald do not deny their inheritance within the continuum of Dub, yet they bring an entirely new vocabulary to Pole’s sonic and spatial universe. We know this from the visual arts, when an artist develops a kind of symbolic vocabulary that becomes inextricably linked with the artist himself. These symbols are delimited until they become exhausted, and thus the search begins for a new alphabet or vocabulary, in order to conjugate it once again. The same, but different. “If Wald had nothing to do with the world of Pole, then I would have come up with a new alter ego and produced it under a new name.”

The structures, forms and processes that Betke perceived in the forest were translated into musical structures, forms and processes that inherently sounded like Pole. Perhaps the forest simply produces reverberations (just like the echo in the mountains!) that give rise to a bounty of thoughts. The story behind it is told in music, without the use of words – as has previously so often been the case with Pole.

Author: Max Dax – Translation: Alexander Paulick-Thiel

format: 12inch vinyl / digital
cat.#: PL12
release date: aug 27th 2012

Tracklisting:
a: lurch (6:37)
b: moos (7:37)

The third and final part of the “waldgeschichten” 12inch series highlights and expands upon pole´s distinctive sound, connecting to the first two parts of the trilogy in a charming way. Again a fundamental element is the very specific drum sound embedded in complex dubby structures, seamlessly unified with the warm and deep basslines.

If you have had the pleasure of listening to one of pole´s live concerts recently, then you will immediately recognize the “lurch” and “moos”.

After the stripped down second part of the trilogy, with its wintery atmosphere, these tracks appear to be floating in melancholy. The field recordings and sounds fade away into echoes, grounded with massive bass.

This is a perfect conclusion to the series, offering a foretaste of the upcoming pole album.