Location:

With the path paved by the transitional Rondell 12", Stefan Betke is to release his third album as Pole, Pole 3. As before, Betke is manipulating the random crackling that leaks from his Waldorf-4-Pole filter, extracting rhythm from a stream of faulty emissions through which he can mix his dub-forming bass and echoes of light. On this, the yellow album, these compositional necessities lie closer to the surface making for a cleaner sound and a more immediate melody.

While expanding, (reducing), upon his fibrous minimalism, Stefan Betke continues to deliver potency to the inconsequential click, investing in its rawness a sentience capable of stimulating urgency and the capacity for growth with successive airing. The arrangements are almost symbiotic in their granite tranquillity. Its spaces and absence of clutter a dry documentation of urban desolation.

One Pole album will never be enough and Pole 3 is as vital as either of the other two.

No dead horses here.

Andrew Morrison
May 2000