POLE – aka innovative German electronic artist Stefan Betke – today announces details of a new album,
Tempus, due out
November 18 via Mute on vinyl, CD and digital platforms.
Watch the video for
“Grauer Sand” by Rainer Kohlberger – the first taste of what to expect from the album –
here.
Pre-order
Tempus here.
Tempus (meaning “the tense of a verb group is its form, which usually shows whether you are referring to past, present, or future time”) considers the connection between the past, present, and future. It is, explains Betke,
“…a natural development to the last album. One which goes further and is even more complex.” It’s a natural topic for Betke to explore, not only because of the connection to 2020’s
Fading – an album about coping with dementia and the loss of memory over time – but because all of Pole’s work has an interconnectedness that spans past, present, and future. While every Pole album is distinctly unique – his catalog glides across ambient, dub, jazz, glitch, and electronica – each is part of an ongoing evolution that links as much to history as it does to the future.
Dub is a constant presence within Betke’s idiosyncratic framework of electronic music, but on
Tempus even more so. The pace, tone, and echo of the dub effects Pole uses traverse the essence of past, present, and future by delaying sounds a beat behind the present, then fading away again into foggy reverb. Interestingly, this album is one of Betke's most overtly jazz-leaning records, though in his singular fashion has deconstructed, mutated, and manipulated the genre.
Despite the neatly executed concept and nuanced themes that run through the record, Betke is still willing to embrace mistakes and accidents. In the same way his discography – from his era-defining trilogy
1 (1998),
2 (1999) and
3 (2000) reissued by Mute in 2020 – connects, the albums also share the accidental feel that gave birth to the project as a whole. Pole is named after a broken Waldorf 4-Pole filter that gave him such a distinct sound. On the new album, you hear a strange, eerie, almost unsettling wailing sound that rings out above the bass-heavy beats.
“That is the sound of my dying Minimoog,” Betke says. But instead of re-recording it, he incorporated the sound of a failing piece of electronic equipment into the heart of the song, thus giving it an entirely new tonal dimension.
The painting on the cover, by
Wolfgang Betke titled
Großstadtwanderer, links into the themes explored on the album. Betke explains,
“I found the whole atmosphere in this totally weird, confused head with these little shimmery eyes leaking through the colours to totally fit the idea of Tempus
.” Pole’s ongoing musical evolution, while retaining a relationship to previous work, means that he is already naturally building an ever-stronger bridge between the present and the past. However, the deeply innovative sounds that he continues to carve and explore, and always breaking new ground with each record, means that bridge is also being extended far into the future.
Tempus exists in a unique space. The production is rich and enveloping, exuding dense yet crisp atmospherics with a striking balance between complexity and compactness throughout.
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