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
Under the Sun cover

Under the Sun

Mark Pritchard
Divine Weight cover

Divine Weight

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Everything cover

Everything

Ben Lukas Boysen, Sebastian Plano
On Falling cover

On Falling

Marcus Fischer
A  Heart From Your Shadow cover

A Heart From Your Shadow

Michael Beharie, Teddy Rankin Parker
Shards cover

Shards

Tim Hecker