Pole

Berlin is important for my creativity.

It’s an odd paradox in the music business that while listeners and critics love naming sounds and starting scenes, the makers themselves invariably detest the very thought, and will take serious umbrage if you badger them about it for long enough.

Stefan ‘Pole’ Betke would definitely take exception to such goading, if anyone could find a suitable genre to actually goad him with. Across five albums now the Berlin-based producer has ignored the prevalent zeitgeist, confounded the perennial classifiers and come up with a canon of cuts which we can really only call Pole Music. They should really get their own little rack in your music megastores, if said shops weren’t all going bust soon anyway.

His latest offering, ‘Steingarten’, is a typically obtuse affair, willfully experimental while often wonderfully lighthearted, variously tempoed but still just about viable on the dancefloor. He’s cut down on the DJing in recent years, so it’s even difficult to quantify whether Pole can still be classified as a ‘dance’ producer, or if he’s now more comfortable among the avant-garde composers who have so informed his sound, the likes of Schoenberg and Steve Reich. Repetitive beats were always a useful way of differentiating between the two experimental schools, those with a club mentality versus the more classical types, and they’re still intact here, just about…

“I don’t agree really,” says Betke. “Avant-garde music can be repetitive in the beats and not that long ago people were dancing to non-repetitive beats. I think some of my older work could be seen as avant-garde, it is a question of perspective. I wish that more people in clubs, especially in Germany, would be more open minded and dance to these kinds of avant-dance music. Beats that are repetitive and funky, but with sounds on top that are much more complex.”

One term that was often thrown at Pole was ‘minimal’, like much of the music emanating from his home city, but Steingarten is an active meander away from that blueprint, and he’d rather not hear the term this time around, ta very much. That said, Betke isn’t consciously trying to set himself apart from the scene back home either, and regards himself as very much a member of the city’s musical community.

Originally from Düsseldorf, Betke moved to the capital in the mid-Nineties and admits that it has helped shape his sound. It has a rich history of doing just that, of course, from David Bowie’s ‘Low’ period thirty years ago to the umpteen producers and composers who now flock to soak up those evocative vibes. Usually it’s the euphoric, innovative club scene that inspires visiting beatmakers, but for Betke, it’s more about buildings.

“Berlin is very influential on me, not least because I am interested in architecture and environments, it is so diverse, full of space and echoes. It helps a lot making the music I make. Berlin is important for my creativity. I could not imagine any other German city I would rather live in at the moment. I think I’m a part of it. I hope so.”

Maybe it’s a predisposition we hold toward our German cousins but Betke can seem an intense, serious individual – or perhaps that’s just the impression generated by his early records. Pole’s first three albums were numbered simply ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’, and he admits that the actual recording process can be “a bit stressy”, particularly those moments where he has to cut a clever bit to make it more accessible (whereas, of course, your more defiantly avant-garde artists would probably do just the opposite). But while finishing an album then leads to a tortuous period of promotion and plugging for many an artist, for Betke it’s a surprisingly blessed relief, as he emerges blinking from the studio and engages with the wider world again.

Berlin is important for my creativity. I could not imagine any other German city I would rather live in at the moment.

“I am a lucky man after I have finished a new album. Everything is exciting. You start working on artwork, you are organizing gigs, you develop ideas to promote the music, you meet a lot of interesting people. You can see how the record develops or not, what people have to say about it and how they criticize it, you become aware of what you could have done better. To be proud isn‘t strong enough a word in this context.”

It may come as something of a surprise that Betke would be so interested in what critics make of his cuts, but such is the solitary and studious nature of his studio work that any feedback thereafter must be rather fascinating. A convoluted set of processes go into the making of a new Pole product, with unfinished themes from previous albums to reinvestigate and new avenues to explore. For Steingarten, he was looking for something “a bit more distorted/strange,” with a “dancey” feel, but not dance music, as such, and definitely no minimalism. He doesn’t really have much mental space left to worry about what the audience will make of it all afterwards.

“I don’t have an idea of how my music will affect a listener before the track is finished, and sometimes I don’t even have a clue after. It is a very self-reflective way of making music. When I start working on an idea I do often think ‘what kind of effect should my music have on me?’ I am the judge and the jury. It is my own world that I try to create.”

Pole’s world it is indeed. We just get to visit every couple of years.

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