Ambient/Drone charts

Review: In honour of the launch of the "Love Record Stores" project, Mute has decided to make Pole's brilliant third album, "3", available in a special yellow-vinyl edition. That's as good an excuse as any to add it to your record collection, though the set's undisputed quality and stone-cold classic status is arguably more of a selling point. By the time he originally released it, Stefan Betke had successfully fine-tuned his spaced-out, minimalist electronic dub style. Combining hypnotic rhythms, some influenced by hip-hop and others by Basic Channel style dub techno, with deep dub basslines, opaque electronics and dusty, often glitchy samples, Betke used "3" to cement his reputation as a genuine sonic innovator. While all of his albums are essential, "3" is arguably the best of the lot.

Review: Astonishing, 22 years have passed since the release of Stefan Betke's debut album as Pole. Along with the "2" and "3" albums that followed in 1999 and 2000 respectively, it helped establish him as a producer with a defiantly distinctive, dub-fired sound: a brand of electronic minimalism that drew just as much on ambient and micro-house as it did techno and of course reggae soundsystem culture. Crackly, spaced-out, hypnotic and mind-soothing, all three albums sound as fresh now as they did when they were first released. Helpfully, Mute has decided to reissue all three at once via this box set. There are no bells and whistles, just three essential albums in a plain black box. If you don't own them already, you know what to do.

Review: Pole's 2022 album Tempus featured one particular track, 'Stechmuck' which was centred on the sound of his dying Minimoog. It's a tidy continuation of the faulty Waldorf filter which inspired his project name in the first place, and now Stefan Betke has taken the inspiration of his broken gear further by inviting a heavyweight cast of remixers to reversion the track. You might not have expected UK electro punk agitators Sleaford Mods to be crossing paths with German minimalist dub, but here we are and the results are incendiary. Elsewhere, Rrose delivers a textbook slice of writhing, tactile techno and Alessandro Cortini brings his grandiose synth expertise to bear on the track.