From the Archives #6

Mutek 2011: Interview with POLE

Mutek, Montreal’s “international festival of digital creativity and electronic music,” is currently on its fifth and penultimate day, but I’m not in town. I first attended a Mutek event in 2009, and covered several editions of the festival for various publications since then. I covered the 2011 festival for SSG Music, and I reviewed the 2013 edition for ACL. That year I also reviewed Maotik and Fraction’ Dromos a/v show at the Society of Art and Technology’s then-new SATosphere for CultMTL. I’m sure I’ve published some one-off articles about Mutek since then, and I definitely Tweeted about the champagne vending machines and the NFT room at New City Gas during last year’s edition.

Anyway, I thought I’d share this old interview from Mutek 2011, when my friend Esther Bourdages and I interviewed Stefan Betke aka Pole, a German artist known for his glitch-influenced minimal dub electronic music.

I’m also particularly partial to his “Birth of Reggae Music” mix.

Betke has long been beloved by fans of minimal techno for his 1-2-3 trilogy and remix album R (1998-2001). In our interview we talk about those classic records, how making music has changed since then, and how we tailors his live sets to cater to a festival audience. Now he has done a lot since then, including three albums of more melancholic and percussive ambient-dub, Wald (2015), Fading (2020), and Tempus (2022). Betke has also continued to do work as a mastering engineer, including John Frusciante's 2016 EP, Foregrow, as well as overseeing the remastering of several albums by Alphaville.

2011 seems like a lifetime ago, but here’s a short time capsule back to how we were thinking about electronic music back then.

CKUT interview with POLE at Mutek 2011

"The computer is the unfunky object of the world" - POLE

CKUT radio: interview featuring electronic musician POLE during the annual MUTEK festival in Montreal. Berlin-based electronic musician Stefan Betke, celebrated globally as POLE, shared views on utilizing technological tools in music making and disappointments felt toward certain uses of the computer today in music making. Interview conducted for broadcast on CKUT's MONDAY MORNING AFTER SHOW by radio journalist Esther Bourdages in collaboration with Joseph Sannicandro.

Broadcasted on CKUT 90.3 FM, Montreal, June 2011, 13:03, English, stereo.

Collaborator-journalist Joseph Sannicandro writes for The Silent Ballet, SSG Music and is involved in the net label Lost Children Net Label.

* For information on POLE visit www.scape-music.de/ & for information on MUTEK visit www.mutek.org/

////

PS. I profiled Esther Bourdages in FREEDOM TO DESTROY, episode 16 of Sound Propositions (2021). In turn, she interviewed me as part of Montreal, Your Ears Are My Island, episode 7 of the Timezones podcast series, for Norient and the Goethe-Institut, Bern (2021).