Pole (aka Stefan Betke) announces new album called ‘Fading’ – A first track, ‘Röschen’, is available now
(Photo by Ben de Biel) Berlin based artist Pole (aka Stefan Betke) has announced more details of a new album called “Fading”. A first track, “Röschen”, is available now.
“Fading” is set for release on Mute on 6 November 2020. Available on vinyl, CD and digitally, the new album follows Mute’s remastered reissues of his groundbreaking trilogy – “1”, “2”, “3” – at the beginning of the year.
Betke: “The album was mostly inspired by the idea of memory loss, 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.”
Check out “Röschen”.
A broken Waldorf 4-Pole filter
Stefan Betke is a German electronic music artist commonly associated with the glitch genre as well as dubtronica. Born in Düsseldorf, Pole took his name from a Waldorf 4-Pole filter, which he accidentally dropped and broke in 1996. Though the filter was perhaps no longer appropriate for DJ work in its damaged state, Betke found the strange hissing and popping noises the filter now made interesting sounds. He then began using the broken filter to create music, launching his musical career.
Betke’s first four albums were all based around this filter, with songs usually taking the form of dub basslines and rhythms with percussion provided by the eponymous filter. In 2003 Betke departed from this style for the album “Pole” (a combination of tracks from two EPs, “45/45” and “90/90”), which utilized a more traditionally electronic production.
Pole has been distributed on several different labels, including Matador Records and Mute Records, and in 1999 Betke cofounded (with Barbara Preisinger) the label ~scape, also known for publishing Jan Jelinek. On September 1, 2011, Betke founded a new artist label named Pole.
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