Pole's CD1/LP1

Stephen Betke is no Lou Reed, and CD1 is no hour of feedback. But the effect is much the same. Both artists are architects, building awe-inspiring structures out of sonic refuse. For Reed, that means an elaborate chain of gizmos constructed to cause intense aural pain. Betke takes a simpler approach. He derives his sound, and his name, from a broken Pole-Waldorf filter which produces random interference patterns, pops, whirrs, and hums--or, for simplicity, "clicks."

Each click may not sound like much, and really, they aren't. It isn't a drum sound--by itself, each click isn't really percussion. In sum, though, the clicks represent many things. They're propulsion, water droplets, footsteps. They're the random crackle of lint on a vinyl record, Morse code at hyperspeed. An entirely mechanical sound becomes equally organic, the inverse to the repetitive thumping of most techno music. Pole's clicks don't thump, and they don't divide neatly into twos and fours for dance-floor bliss. Rather, they submerge themselves and rattle around in your headphones until you're thoroughly disoriented.

What sets Betke apart from Reed is that he doesn't stop at Chaos' trash. Reed's architecture turns out to be nothing more than unpleasant postmodernist sculpture, jagged enough to disembowel anybody not drunk enough to know better. Pole constructs an actual building, a home: the clicks may form the base, but as everything else piles on, you realize that they're just part of the larger superstructure. And it's just so damn pretty. One big techno cliché is the melody fragment, as if producers don't trust us with any motif longer than two seconds. Pole works with fragments but uses so many of them that it really doesn't matter. Each one is dubbed out, echoed, or chopped up between the speakers. A second is added on, then three more. They're all moving at different speeds, grooving along with compressed emotion in the form of a quack or squeal or horn. Suddenly, you're not at all where you started, and you have no idea how you got there. It's some sort of Berlin pastoral. Every once in a while you notice a child laughing, a wave crashing, an ice cream truck's chime. Mostly, you just enjoy the journey.

Betke likes toying with the distinctions between noise and music, stasis and motion. He uses repetition and the elements of white noise--chaotic clicks, hisses, and the rest--to make moving, ordered music. Every sound is non-musical--even the melodies are pure tones or whines.

But then he dubs it all together and adds a killer reggae-influenced bassline which makes everything groove. The subtle effects of dub constantly inform his music, letting him alter his beats, so a chugging train sounds like it's receding into the distance.

If Metal Machine Music is for late-night head-clearing, then CD1 is for any late night. It's the best kind of driving music, because it's simultaneously lulling and jolting, simple and complex, and always beautiful. One of the best albums of last year is finally being released in America. It's about time. (Matador)

--Sam Frank

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