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
Goodbye to Language cover

Goodbye to Language

Daniel Lanois, Rocco Deluca
Dreamstate cover

Dreamstate

Kelly Lee Owens
Versus cover

Versus

The Sabres of Paradise
Existenz cover

Existenz

Function
Pinch & Shackleton cover

Pinch & Shackleton

Pinch, Shackleton
Koch cover

Koch

Lee Gamble
Origin of You cover

Origin of You

Mindy Meng Wang, Sui Zhen
Hazel cover

Hazel

Æthenor