Steingarten

Berlin producer Stefan Betke took his nom de plume from a busted Waldorf 4-pole filter that lent his most characteristic work a little crackle and hiss, but I couldn't help hearing his early electronic experiments as the aural equivalent of an actual pole: cold, metallic, not very interesting and utterly devoid of emotion, personality and authorship. Have you ever fallen in love with a pole? Me neither. For three straight albums (called 1, 2 and 3, natch), Pole's music consisted mostly of muted dub basslines, clicks, and crackles, which changed absurdly little during that time. I bought 1, 2 and 3 with my own money, but don't think that I'm entirely okay with that.

When Pole hit a dead-end on 3, he had no choice but to turn a corner, and so he did. Unfortunately, what resulted was a misguided, lackluster foray into hip-hop (the creatively titled Pole), with C-list rapper Fat Jon sleep-talking over a few of the flaccid arrangements. The Pole fans who believed that any move would be a good one just by switching directions were given a hearty helping of disappointment. By contrast, Steingarten represents Pole's first "good move" away from his patented sound without abandoning the oblong melodies that would poke their heads out from time to time. In fact, it's hard not to view Steingarten as Pole accepting blame for how embarrassingly awful his eponymous record turned out, apologizing, and attempting to right himself again. It's okay, Betke; we forgive you.

Steingarten's cover is the first indication that we're in for something new. Album artwork has lost some importance in the mp3 era, but in Pole's case it speaks volumes: 1, 2 and 3 were monochromatic blue, red and yellow respectively, and Pole's street scene was clouded by an opaque bluish-gray tint. Steingarten, on the other hand, features a vividly rendered graphic of one of King Ludwig II's absurdly magical castles (Schloss Neuschwanstein, which still exists) nestled within pine trees and snow-capped mountains, and the song titles--"Winkelstreben," "Sylvenstein," "Schöner Land"--read like fairy tale places in a fraulein's dream. But while Steingarten may not be the radical departure that its cover suggests, it's distinct enough from Pole's previous work that nobody is going to mistake this for a retread. Give it enough listens and it actually starts to adopt the illusion of a warped Disneyland or a highly mechanized German fantasy world.

Like Pole, all the damaged crackling from the 4-pole filter has been scrubbed away; Betke's smart enough not to pull that trick again. Unlike Pole, Steingarten suggests hip-hop without stating it explicitly, and makes sly references to upbeat electro; strangely funky songs like "Achterbahn" and "Winkelstreben" beg me to release my inner nerd and dance. The impossibly clean production is a plus where it used to be a hindrance, since there are a lot of interesting things going on and because Pole doesn't hesitate to strategically clutter his tracks with all sorts of oddball detritus. "Warum," for example, begins with an operating-room rhythm and a cyborg handclap, then adds cleanly plucked bass, a skittering squeak, processed electric guitar and clanking noises that remind me of a brick hitting a bathtub. Little of this is very melodic, but somehow the atonality of these compositions is sort of tonal (for a contemporary parallel, see Oval's Systemisch), and Steingarten's peculiar musicality reveals itself when we accept Pole on his own terms.

Though Betke was once an engineer for Basic Channel (the label that virtually created glitch electronica in the `90s), the word "futuristic" doesn't spring to mind when I hear this, and it's actually somewhat retro in the way it hobbles along like a defective wind-up toy. Percussive elements in "Mädchen" and "Sylvenstein" lag slightly behind the meter; skewed melodies bulge and throb like they're being played on something outmoded and not working quite the way it should. Balancing out the obtuseness is a sense of spontaneity not previously heard on any Pole record ever. He'll throw things into the pot only to yank them back out again, as on "Schöner Land," when he lets fly with a gorgeous swab of ambience for about 25 seconds before a blast of noise snuffs it out. There's easily more dynamism here than on 1, 2, 3 and Pole combined, which is how he escapes the "heard one, heard them all" curse that plagued everything he churned out until now.

My chief issue with Steingarten is one that's been leveled at Pole (and Basic Channel) so many times it has become cliché: it's still too cold and distant for the casual listener to embrace. Immediate as it is, you simply can't inhabit this stuff, just like we wouldn't be able to live in Schloss Neuschwanstein if we tried (and neither, apparently, could King Ludwig; in 1886, a State Commission declared him officially insane). While Jan Jelinek and pretty much the entire Kompakt roster create minimal techno that's soothing and comfortable, Pole sometimes comes off like another placeholder in Chain Reaction's graying catalog or a casualty of Mille Plateaux's unceremonious demise. Also, "Pferd" is a little too morose to fit with the rest of the proceedings, but that's nitpicking; this is arguably Pole's best record and undoubtedly a big, big step in the right direction. We should keep encouraging him, so that one day he might truly astound us.