Stefan Betke is now into the 22nd year of an artistic career that began in the late ’90s with the era-defining Pole trilogy 1, 2 and 3. Always seeking to expand his musical language, Betke’s idiosyncratic sound explores concepts of past, present and future within the pace, tone and echo of his favoured dub music aesthetic – ajourney that’s continued to evolve across a further four albums: Pole, Steingarten, Wald and Fading.
Betke’s latest offering, Tempus, continues his explorative voyage by shifting his dub-inflected concept in the direction of jazz. Abstract and minimal yet warmly inviting, Tempus’ interpolating bass, innovative-sounding percussion and synths are immaculately constructed… little surprise to those familiar with Betke’s day job as a skilled mastering engineer operating from his Scape Mastering studio in Berlin.
You’ve mentioned that Tempus is a natural development from your last album Fading. Tell us more about that… “
I’ve been using the same technologies for the past 20 years, so my development of Pole is not really about the tools I use in the studio but my philosophies behind making music and how I use and refer to existing styles and genres like dub and jazz. I’m continually deconstructing and rebuilding elements from the musical language that I’ve been working with since the beginning of my Pole releases in the late ’90s.”
What methods do you use to convey the various concepts that you’re exploring through the music?
“About 30% of it is pre-planned – Ihave an idea of what I’d ideally like to do and then I go into the studio and try to work on the structural ideas and atmospheres that I have in my head to see what happens. With instrumental music you can’t put anything into words so everything has to come from the instruments that you’re playing. That goes hand in hand with accidents and elements that I try to develop, mute and destroy until, if
