Stefan Betke of Berlin started the ~scape label after his own work (recorded under the name Pole) sold beyond anyone's expectations, turning him into one of the few experimental electronic music producers recognized by anyone outside the insular "Intelligent Dance Music" community. After wowing critics and fellow studio maestros alike with his genre-busting soundscapes of hisses and crackles echoing into infinity -- a style he called "urban dub" -- he set up ~scape as an outlet for artists influenced by him (and to a lesser extent, vice versa). In a little more than a year, it's become the premier imprint specializing in the emerging sound referred to by many journalists as "digi-dub" -- the aesthetics of '60s dub reggae pioneers like King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry translated to the modern MIDI-enhanced studio. Many of the artists on this compilation are also heavily influenced by the minimal techno pioneered in Detroit and taken to the extreme by the Berlin label Basic Channel, which, incidentally, employed Betke as a mastering engineer for a while.
Pole Music
Dub narcotic: Stefan Betke (a.k.a. Pole) offers a new ~scape compilation, bringing Jamaican dub into the electronic age.
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So in other words, we're wading in some pretty esoteric waters here. While a few of the assembled acts have loose ties to dance music, these 10 songs are best enjoyed on a comfy couch, with headphones and perhaps a nice cup of green tea. The opening three tracks -- "siemens.bioport" by Gramm, ".d/kompiila" by Vladislav Delay and "Echelon" by Sun Electric -- at first sound like Brian Eno-esque ambient pieces, but closer inspection reveals submerged bass lines and distant clicking rhythm patterns. To most ears, they'll probably come off as stark to a fault -- the emotion seems intentionally stripped away from them, like the monochrome work of early Russian abstract painters.
The standout tracks though -- more substantive and accessible -- are stunning. Kit Clayton of San Francisco, one of America's fastest rising techno stars, submits "Reins," an ever-shifting melodious affair that pays respect to the studio techniques of the dub masters while remaining futuristic and original. For the next track, Pole bounces synthesizer notes around an atmosphere of surface noise and echoing hum. As the CD continues, the songs get closer to recognizable reggae numbers -- "Pavonia Mix" by Trash Aesthetic and "Fellmaus" by Thomas Fehlmann actually make use of "real" drum sounds. "Eurojah (Immigrant Dub)" by seasoned minimalist Jorg Burger (recording as The Modernist) is a carefully polished after-hours techno track that should inspire a few listeners to run out and pick up his brilliant full length, Explosion, recently released by Matador. The final cut by Burnt Friedman & the Nu Dub Players, who also just released a great album (Just Landed, on ~scape), offers the most humorous effort, "Hard Drive Dub," built around a human beat box and a rootsy guitar riff. All in all, staedtizism will be interesting to open-minded enthusiasts of ambient, dub, and new-fangled electronic explorations -- not those looking for hum-along party tunes.
