Released

Basic Channel was a label, and a duo, and an entire way of looking at music. Initially very much not visible, Mortiz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus made the music behind the various aliases here. It stayed this way for years, actually. What they achieved was one of the biggest flips in electronic music history. They made techno and dub the same thing, and made electronic sounds feel completely organic. Not the only and not the first, but these records remade the frame and the game, both. They continued to work under the alias Rhythm & Sound, and ultimately their own given names. These are absolute classics unlike anything before or after, and the language to describe them will likely never change: muffled, aquatic, dirty, degraded, whooshy, sandwormy.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Suggestions
Chronicles I cover

Chronicles I

The 7th Plain
Ginger cover

Ginger

Speedy J
Vol. 3 cover

Vol. 3

Topdown Dialectic
Shape Memory cover

Shape Memory

Marcus Fischer, Simon Scott
Psychick Rhythms, Vol. 1 cover

Psychick Rhythms, Vol. 1

Psychick Warriors ov Gaia
Spanners cover

Spanners

The Black Dog
Schwingungen cover

Schwingungen

Ash Ra Tempel, Manuel Göttsching