Polar Opposites

While populist German dance music still resounds to the beat of the trance drum, things have never looked healthier for the country s underground scene: labels like Tresor, International Deejay Gigolos, Ladomat, Disko B, Compost and Playhouse have become institutions and bywords for cutting edge electronic music.
Producers like Hell, Jazzanova, Isolee, Lo Soul, Roman Flugel, Mike Ink, Mouse On Mars, Thomas Brinkmann and the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction stable continue to challenge the accepted boundaries of dance music, releasing idiosyncratic works.
Stefan Betke aka Pole is probably the best example of Germany s proud experimental heritage. Constructing majestic mood music, Pole sounds unlike anything we ve ever heard here at Digital Beat.
Devoid of beats, sparse yet complex, combining ambience with intensity and the deep dub sound with crackling, raw form electronics, Betke is about to release his third album, the imaginatively titled Pole 3. We spoke to Stefan about his unique musical innovations.

Tell me something about your musical background before Pole: how did you originally get involved in making music?
I grew up with different styles of music but when I started listening to music really carefully it was jazz influenced stuff, John Zorn and all that New York scene, early to mid eighties. This was originally my main background jazz, avant-garde and later every form of jazz: jazz hip-hop, traditional jazz stuff.
Then you got interested in dance music?
Not really. I m not a big fan of dance music or techno. I learnt about techno a lot and I went to clubs but I was more impressed by the phenomenon of techno than by the music itself. It was a completely new music, a revolution after rock and all that other shit. It was the first new music in years.
You re originally from Dusseldorf, but then you moved to Berlin. Do you think the city has had an effect on the music you make?
Yes. Berlin is one of the most impressive cities in Germany. It s the only really big city we have, actually. Berlin has a big influence on every musician: you only need to walk around. You see so many different things that are really impressive and are influencing you all the time.
You re the engineer at Dubplates & Mastering, the Basic Channel affiliated pressing plant. How did you meet up with them?
I lived in Berlin for over a year, actually one and a half years before I met them for the first time. I went to the record shop, Hardwax, and bought records, but I started to work for them only after one and a half years. It s really simple, I needed a job and I started working as an engineer for them!
Do you think your association with them has influenced your own work?
When you listen to music and become part of the scene then you are always influenced by the scene somehow. This is definitely neither negative or positive, just a fact, and so was I. I was definitely influenced by them or by parts of them, but I worked on this music long before I met them. However, Pole is so outstanding with his stuff, so separated from all these things that you can also find for jazz, dub or techno influences.
You ve been quoted as saying that you use the production methods of dub. Do you find that you have more in common with dub than modern dance music?
I found my favourite style of music in dub music, and I was a fan for as long as I can remember of deep basslines and echo and lots of space between sounds. I would say that this is definitely the main thing for me.
What about your third album, do you think its a progression onwards from Pole 1 and Pole 2?
I wouldn t say it s similar. There was definitely a much bigger gap between Pole 1 and Pole 2 than between Pole 2 and Pole 3. But it s only really close to number 2 and its not really similar. There are differences in the way I produce it, there are differences in how I organize the structure of the track. There are so many different layers in it and so many different parts and sounds and different developments of the sound.
Is there a lot more sampling on it, because I picked up on a lot more sounds in your music this time?
No, what you recognised as a sample are field recordings. I did a couple of field recordings last year during my touring and in the studio I just played the tape all the time in the background on a channel of the mixing desk. It was running all the time. On the single, Rondell , I even used a recording of a lobby in Zurich that played Hungarian string orchestra music!
Pole 3 is available on Kiff on May 22nd.