Pole: songs for the state-of-art Gen

We’ve become too addicted to cult of personality and the flood of pretty-vacancies better known as ‘celebrities’ that invade our daily dysfunction. All this has simply led to recycling of clichés and sound- and type-casting. Now, if you please, concentrate on forgetting all that you may know about Pole; obviously, if ignorant – you are advantaged! Then, take the disc out, stick it in, press play and close your eyes.

Huge washes of some stunning noises are hitting you like a downpour does The Grand Canyon. Not that the artist is American but raises a question – whether music possesses, is pre-determined by nationality of its creator? One hopes not because the Cyber-village has made us all (potentially) true Earthlings, for the first time. Living on Alexander Platz, Berlin, rather than South Beach, Miami, makes no difference to myriad online info, music, fun, and cyber-living…

That’s how Pole sounds – global, of the planet. No idea whether the artist set out to create a ‘review of music history’, but that’s what we get, in a soundbyte. From the appropriately entitled opener, ‘Slow Motion’, a ‘lazy’ funker, instrumentally minimal but emotionally maximistic, we progress to a more ambient cut, ‘Bushes (There Is A Secret Behind)’, that turns into a quirky soundtrack piece to a ‘Spaghetti western’ (echo of Ennio Morricone alert!) spiced up by Thomas Hass’s inventive sax-playing. The man returns for ‘Green Is Not Green-Yellow’ (accompanied by an upright bassist, August Engkilde) for another sublime sax-ist section that floors you to helplessly watch a count-out!

It is a reggae-cum-dub sliced by wind-ing instrument to take you higher-and-higher to a plateau of suspension, hovering in ether, spiritual diving without a safety net! ‘Like Rain (But Different)’ keeps the tone near avant-garde and yet accessible and danceable; ‘The Bell’ digs deeper into bass-land although it is quite a rap-lite piece, alike ‘Arena’ and ‘Round Two’ a few tracks earlier.

Vocalised in English – it’s ‘official’ Rock’n’Roll language, after all – by rapper Fat Jon, the impact is ‘sans frontiers’. The concluding ‘Back Home’ is a computerized hybrid of reggae-rhyddims and World-musicy details that surprise and delight as if a girl jumped out of your Tiramisu portion!

Passionate, exploratory, soulful machine-based creativity presents songs for the K-Gen, perhaps? K, as in kaput. Far superior music the current masses may not deserve.

8/10
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For those who can’t bear to live without the bare facts, here are parts of a PR missive from the record company: Stefan Betke, aka Pole, is a composer/player/producer of ‘Pole’, “a revealing conclusion to a series of releases in which two EPs (‘45/45’ and ‘90/90’) merge in the album. Although the tracks assembled here stay faithful to the spirit of dub and Betke’s trusted production formula (i.e. computer-arranged sound design which, in the tweak of the tiniest loop, celebrates reduction right down to the essentials) ‘Pole’ shows a much greater affinity to hip hop, and the album is substantially more organic, percussive and funky than his previous recordings.

Fans of Pole [or plainly curious] can now get a preview of what’s in store with a visit to the newly launched www.pole-music.com featuring all the official (and unofficial) news, tour and release information plus the promise of regular personal appearances from Stefan who is the driving force behind this innovative new site.”
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Pole play a special one-off London show at Plastic People, 147-149 Curtain Road, EC2, on Sunday, 20 July, with Fat Jon