Tempus

Album review

The minimal, haunted dub sound electronic artist Stefan Betke created with his earliest material as Pole was the result of gear on the fritz. Unintentional clicks, pops, and distortions from a malfunctioning hardware filter box became the backbone of Pole's groundbreaking skeletal tracks in the late '90s and early 2000s. While Betke took Pole to more ornate places with his subsequent work, the spirit of experimentation that guided his early output is alive and well on his eighth album, Tempus. Seven lengthy, slowly evolving pieces make up the album, and rhythms integrate Betke's signature snaps of otherworldly percussion with more commonplace electronic drum sounds. "Grauer Sand" is one of the best moments on Tempus, bridging the fragmented loops of sub-bass and wide-open atmospheres of the earliest Pole material with deeply buried swatches of jazzy piano and the occasional crack of a huge, reverb-coated snare drum. The embrace of chance and imperfection that led Betke to craft rhythms from unintentional sound errors is also present on Tempus, with the unsettling croaks and whines of a dying synthesizer showing up amid the broken beats and stumbling bassline of "Alp" and complaining loudly over the majority of the otherwise steady dub pulse of "Stechmück." Like the best of Pole's material, Tempus is deep and blurry, basking in a dark glow. Though nowhere near as minimal as his earlier material, Betke sculpts his tracks with a consideration that makes even a densely layered piece like the title track feel spare and hypnotic. Pole continues advancing musically on Tempus, stowing away new sounds and approaches so subtly that they only surface when zeroed in on. Like everything produced under the Pole banner, Tempus presents itself from a knowing distance at first, feeling cold and contained when observed from afar, but revealing new layers of intrigue as you draw closer.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo