Pole shares new track to announce forthcoming album, ‘Fading’
(Photo by Ben de Biel) Earlier this year, Pole (aka Stefan Betke) returned to Mute for the remastered reissue of his groundbreaking trilogy, “1”, “2”, “3” as we reported a while back.
Pole is now back with his first album release since 2015’s “Wald”. “Fading” will be out on Mute on 6 November 2020. Earlier in August you could already enjoy the track “Röschen” and now Pole has shared “Nebelkrähe”.
Listen to the new track below.
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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Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
