t might seem perfunctory to review Pole’s recent eps in light of the full-length’s availability, but, with the latter’s contents now known, a retrospectively different light is cast upon the former. Furthermore, with the trio of releases at hand, it’s possible to assess Mute’s strategy in releasing two EPs as opposed to the typical one prior to the full-length’s appearance. Conceivably, one might be disappointed to discover that all four of 45/45’s tracks reappear on Pole (albeit with Fat Jon added to three of them) and that 90/90 includes three versions of ‘Slow Motion,’ one or even two of which could be deemed unnecessary by all but the most fanatical of Pole aficionados. 45/45 and 90/90 are obvious primers for Pole, then, with the three releases incestuously sharing tracks. ‘Slow Motion’ reappears on the full-length, accompanied by four new pieces ‘Bushes (there is a secret behind),’ ‘Umbrella,’ ‘Like Rain (but different),’ and ‘Green is not Green – Yellow.’ Mute presumably intended to minimize the ‘shock’ of Pole’s new sound by gradually acclimatizing listeners to it with two appetizers, but doing so has rendered Pole anticlimactic and removed the element of surprise. Imagine how much more startling and fresh Pole would sound if it had been dropped upon an unsuspecting public with no foreshadowing of its content. At the very least, a single ep with, say, the tracks ‘Slow Motion (instrumental),’ ‘Arena (instrumental),’ ‘I Can’t Hear (ska version),’ and ‘Back Home’ would have whetted sufficiently the listening public’s collective appetite and introduced adequately the new sound while preserving Fat Jon’s presence for the full-length.


How does the new sound compare to the old? There are noticeable differences, yet vestiges of his former style remain. 45/45’s ‘The Bell’ suggests that the lurching and lumbering quality of his sound is still present. Drums are now included, but this concession to conventionality is tempered by their light touch and subtle incorporation. While the phantom accents and dub effects of ‘Arena’ exude an ominous, brooding quality, the new mood is generally sunnier. Compare, for example, the lugubrious and narcoticized qualities of the tracks on Pole’s third full-length (the ‘yellow’ release) with the buoyant feel and skipping beat of 45/45’s ‘Back Home.’ The entropic quality of the ‘yellow’ Pole has undergone a ‘rehab’ of sorts, resulting in a cleaner and reinvigorated sound.


90/90 is a slightly more radical departure given the presence of Fat Jon (Marshall) on two versions of ‘Slow Motion.’ While the collaboration feels natural, the track does reduce Pole to a backup role, with Betke largely ceding the spotlight to the Ohio-based rapper. The originality of the subject matter—temporal phenomenology—is countered by the sometimes banal lyrics (‘As far as we all know there’s only one way to gauge time/Whether it’s play time, work time, or hit-the-stage time/Hours, minutes, and seconds, bars, beats’n’ticks/Your watch isn’t broken right now, there’s no need to fix it’). As mentioned, ‘Slow Motion’ gets three treatments: in addition to the aforementioned collaboration, there’s an instrumental version which brings Betke’s subtle enhancements to the forefront, and an a cappella treatment with Fat Jon’s laconic rap standing alone. Depending on your point of view, this last piece might come across as a rare opportunity to hear a rapper’s vocal delivery presented in its pure form or as pointless filler, a third version of a track where the first would have sufficed. The other piece, ‘I Can’t Hear,’ carries on the collaborative theme with August Engkilde on upright bass and Copenhagen resident Thomas Haas on saxophone.


Even when ubiquitous textural details showered his former tracks, Betke’s music possessed an interstitial sensitivity to the spaces within the music. That spacious quality is even more pronounced in his new sound, as he has largely excised the textural elements to leave behind the skeletal remains of his uniquely skewed dub. Admittedly, some of his former music’s defining characteristics are gone. Nowhere will one find the crackles and pops that made his debut so revolutionary, and, even though the new direction offers a healthy artistic move forward, it’s sad to hear those signature traits excised so completely. In spite of that, the aural evidence affirms that Pole’s new music largely retains the distinctiveness of the old, in spite of its radical shift in direction.