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
Tides cover

Tides

Arovane
Koch cover

Koch

Lee Gamble
Replica cover

Replica

Oneohtrix Point Never
Giallo cover

Giallo

Robohands
ASS cover

ASS

Schneider TM, Jochen Arbeit, Günter Schickert
Behold cover

Behold

Oren Ambarchi, Jim O'Rourke
Pinch & Shackleton cover

Pinch & Shackleton

Pinch, Shackleton