Bleep

Renowned electronic musician Stefan Betke, aka Pole, was responsible for a series of distinguished dub techno records during towards the latter end of the 1990s, but in recent years his release rate has slowed to a crawl. His last album was 2007’s Steingarten, while his only major releases since then have been a trilogy of 12”s (the Waldgeschicten series in 2011) and a one-off collaboration with Roll The Dice in 2012. So it’s fair to say that Wald, Betke’s first studio album in eight years, carries with it a weight of expectation. Billed as a single, 50-minute piece of music split into three acts, Wald is inspired by Betke’s walks through the Isar Valley and the forests of the Alps. Still spiritually aligned to dub, the music is more freeform and three-dimensional than ever before, culminating in a psychedelic-synthetic final act. Its genesis lies in the Waldgeschichten series, and indeed some of Wald’s numbers are live interpretations of these earlier tracks, but ultimately this record feels as though Betke is finding new methods to express himself - both recognisably Pole yet never retreading familiar ground.