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
Six Degrees cover

Six Degrees

Morris Cowan
Compendium cover

Compendium

Old Apparatus
R.I.P. cover

R.I.P.

Actress
Music For Healing cover

Music For Healing

Richard Norris
Smoke Point cover

Smoke Point

Smoke Point
MM/KM cover

MM/KM

Mix Mup, Kassem Mosse
Quiet Logic cover

Quiet Logic

Haruomi Hosono, Jonah Sharp, Mixmaster Morris
With the Artists cover

With the Artists

Rhythm & Sound