People had a hard time putting a finger on Pole’s sound when the project emerged in the late 90s. Düsseldorf producer Stefan Betke’s amorphous sonics could be linked to many other styles, yet somehow seemed to evade all of them: the atmospheric production and liberal use of sub bass meant that the project was clearly rooted in dub, while the way that Betke rewired classic dub tropes for the modern age placed Pole in the orbit of the illbient and dub techno sounds that had become popular earlier in the decade. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that a very literal rewiring brought Betke to straddle the genre boundaries in the first place: a broken Waldorf 4-Pole filter is the source of the project's name, and the fizzing, crackling electricity of its defects birthed an entirely new sound.
With each album of his original triptych of LPs from 1998 to 2000, Betke crept towards more active, jittering dubscapes, yet the spacious mixes and solemn air that hung over Pole’s music meant it didn’t fit neatly within those dub confines at all. This was, for all intents and purposes, something rather unusual, and new language like “glitch-dub” and “dubtronic” was coined to fill the gaps in each track’s minimal and molten atmospheres. The lax pacing of his debut album 1 made room for synapse snapping stutters and sizzles, beeping signals and citric dub bass, and glimpses of woozy melody sighted behind the noise. 2 proved rhythmically and percussively busier, with dub influences rising to lightning strike glitches and mosquito buzzing synths, while 3 properly surfaced like some heavily warped Caribbean import, its bass notes traipsing into boiler room ambience and gravel filled reverb throws.
To modern ears these records still sound remarkable, their scritch-scratch soundscapes and enveloping bass linking up with other electronic innovators of the time like Mika Vainio, Oval, and Jan Jelinek, while forming a singular sound all on their own.
