pole
Stefan Betke aka pole was born and raised in Dusseldorf, where he played keyboards and synthesizer in different band projects. It was in Cologne that Betke began work on his acclaimed and influential trilogy "1", "2" and "3", completing it in Berlin after moving there in 1996. He released the trilogy as pole between 1998 and 2000. During this time, he also became a mastering engineer for vinyl and CD at Dubplates & Mastering.
In 1999, Stefan Betke and Barbara Preisinger started their label ˜scape, which became an imprint for unique and outstanding electronic music made by artists such as Jan Jelinek, Deadbeat, Kit Clayton, pole and many more. The same year Stefan Betke left Dubplates & Mastering to open up his own studio for CD and vinyl pre-mastering called scape mastering.
After releasing two 12 inches and an album on Daniel Miller’s famous Mute label, his well respected solo album “Steingarten” came out on ˜scape in 2007. Then in mid 2008, Betke re-issued his earlier trilogy as a triple box set on ˜scape to keep this milestone in electronic bass music available.
While Stefan Betke was continuing to play live shows around the globe as well as produce electronic music and remix artists, he and Barbara were still running the label ˜scape on which the critically acclaimed "Round Black Ghosts" compilations were released in 2008 and 2009: two collections of tracks that blur the line between dubstep and techno. At the same time, Stefan Betke co-organized Unsound Festival’s “Connections” project in Minsk, where artists from Europe, including Pinch, Kadebostan, Jacek Sienkiewicz, pole and more collaborated for one week with local Belarusian artists. This project ended in a CD release called “Connections”. Since then, Stefan Betke has been asked regularly to share his knowledge with students and musicians/producers in workshops at festivals and universities, such as Mutek/ Montreal, Unsound/Krakow, Merz Academie/Stuttgart, AKG Scholarship of Sound/Berlin, just to name a few.
While Stefan Betke was expanding his musical output, he still was doing mastering for renowned producers such as Richie Hawtin, Daniel Bell, Norm Telly, Scott Furgeson, Delano Smith, Josh T. Pearson, Erasure, Apparat, Grinderman, Gudrun Gut, Thomas Fehlmann, The Mole, Mathew Jonson and various labels such as Mute, Third Ear, Minus, Wagon Repair, Leaf and many more. So it became a logical step that in 2009 Stefan Betke bought a Neumann VMS 70 cutting lathe to again offer vinyl mastering for producers in club and electronic music .
Recently, pole´s live sets developed into a funky and grooving dance floor direction presented in clubs like Fabric/London, Watergate/Berlin and The Bunker/New York CIty, as well as festivals like Bestival/Isle of White, Bloc Festival/UK and Mutek/Montreal, while maintaining the pole sound design and creativity for his record releases. He recently started to release anew series of 12”s on his new label, also called pole, in the 2nd half of 2011 and earlier this year. These are aiming towards a new album to be released this year. He is also preparing a digital re issue of his full back cataloque. These new releases reconnect pole’s latest sound visions with his earlier work on the edge between electronic club music, urban dub and avantgarde, the sound for which pole was always well known and respected!
Stefan Betke will also be giving a free presentation on mastering during the festival, as part of Unsound LABS – this is a rare chance to gain insight into the mastering process from one of the world’s true experts.
