Pole and Skalpel at Gretchen / Saturday, 21.05.2016

Local electronic dub pioneer Pole and Ninja Tunes artists Skalpel come to Gretchen in Kreuzberg for and excellent lineup this May.

Stefan Betke founded his artist label named “pole” in September 2011. Made for the music of pole, this imprint will keep Betke’s large back catalogue available, as well as give his forthcoming releases an autonomous structure for experimentation and creativity. Since the nineties, Stefan Betke has been working as a label owner, publisher and mastering engineer, contributing his experience to the development of electronic music.

https://youtu.be/1oodxYa1E40

The artist label “pole” is intended to create a place where pole´s original and unique sound can be developed further, and combined with new production methods and ideas. In the second half of 2011 pole re-released his full back catalogue digitally, including classical records such as “1,2,3,” “Steingarten” and “Steingarten Remixes,” and started to release new music on a series of 12 inches “waldgeschichten”. In September 2015 pole´s album “wald” was released. As Pole puts it: “My new music will sound very warm, has a lot of bass and stands in a strong relation to my musical history.”

Skalpel are Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo DJs/producers from Wroclaw, Poland. Being new recruits of Ninja Foreign Legion, they are rather hesitant to speak about their past. Sufficient to say, they are talented DJs, whose 4 mixes were aired on Solid Steel in the past, two of which were released as “Virtual Cuts” – namely the best mixtape released in the history of electronic music in Poland.

The year 2000 was a landmark for them, as they traveled the country with DJ Vadim and his Russian Percussion, presenting an amazing 4-deck show. Later that year they released demo CD-R titled “Polish Jazz”, which not only received a lot of critical acclaim, but also led Skalpel to signing a contract with Ninja Tune. For the last two years they’ve been digging in the crates, trying to build the most exciting collection of samples from Polish Jazz records. Now they are slowly unleashing the music created from these sounds. They ressurected dusty&smokey spirit of polish jazz of 60s and 70s, and reimagined it for 21st century audiophiles.