Customer Reviews

Basic Channel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

OK, I'll admit up front here that this is a good sampler and intro to the Basic Channel sound. For those uninitiated, BC was a mysterious Detroit + Berlin (maybe) partnership that turned out a short series of utterly amazing, trance-inducing 12"s up thru the mid-90s. The sound of these things ranged from pure ambience up thru a pulsing minimal techno beat, with a sizable emphasis on atmosphere. These, plus such things as Jeff Mills' Axis releases, did much to define 'minimal techno', but the BC material always seemed to go much further than just that category. Anyway, about the missing star here...see, some of these tracks in their full versions can go on for full album-side lengths, perhaps 16-18 or so minutes. And there is _no way_ you can cram some of the most spectacular of these on one single CD without some editing and chopping, and that's what's been done here, sadly. Plus there's some astounding work missing here, such as B-side of Cyrus's "Presence", the 'Phylypstrak' pieces, and so forth. No...what needs doing is to release the uncut Basic Channel work as a box CD set, to be honest. Then I'd give it eleventy-nine stars, if I could! But for those looking to get a taste, this isn't bad...but my recommendations at this date would be to go hunt down the actual 12"s if you've got vinyl playback.

I'm writing this as a music lover AND musician, and my first reaction to this CD was "ok, they have a drum loop run with a few sound effects for 6 minutes and call it a song." Boy was I wrong! The movements, progressions, and, if you will, melodies are on a hypnotic level that is easily missed at first, heck even third listen. Basic Channel has mastered the art of tapping into your psyche and giving your brain a ride through the dulling effect of a techno club downtown.

Speaking of "techno" clubs, since the word techno itself is very vague, I believe Basic Channel actually sounds more like you are OUTSIDE of a club, hearing the muted electronic kick pulse through the wall, but the echoing, wabbling synth tones seep through the ventilation cracks enough to entice your interest. Most cuts fade in and out, and I believe this is a collection of some abbreviated works that originally existed only on vinyl, so in some ways, you almost feel cheated that you don't have the whole thing... sounds crazy considering you just may have listened to an 8 minute track that a casual listener would say "sounds repetative."

The ultimate in barely-there techno. Very minimal but very very very deep too. At first listen its repetitive and lengthy, but thats the beauty of it, such subtle changes in the songs, that you barely notice them before the tracks are over. You can get lost in this cd over and over again.

Truly is art

possibly the closest German successor to kraftwerk.

targeted at the dance floor, tracks lock into a deeply repetitive sub-base groove, bass and treble on headphones, a mid range of 'hidden' noises at higher volumes over speakers, rhythms and sounds shuffle-slipping in and out of sync.

Unlike kraftwerk basic channel have a distinctive lo-fi sound, with a more scratchy less futuristic slant. What really makes this music work so well is the attention paid to the rhythms-repetitive but not monotonous, and care, bordering on obsession with creating a very strong sense of space-This is dub.....pretending to be techno.

Slower beatless tracks like 'radiance' work on this idea of acoustic perspective, as good as anything Eno did in 'On Land' (ambient 4)

what would the reviewer like to see?.....A basic channel versus Jon Hassell (fourth world trumpeter) Why?-its probably got a lot to do with what both artists share- rhythm, repetition , a sculptural/spacey sound. But bo! th artist have a sort of otherworldliness to their sound which would contrast nicely.

finally other recommendations would include........ah they've come clean at last!-'Rhythm and sounds' compilation of 10 inches called 'showcase'(EFA CD 50241-2)-Basic Channel team up with "Tikiman' form Kingston Jamaica for some PROPER DUB tracks. Dub-tastic!

This is NOT Pole as some user wrote in a review here.
Basic Channel was established by the berlin duo Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald (aka Maurizio)
This is an excellent cd of true minimal and detroit techno similar to the sound of many Chain Reaction releases.
Highly recommended if you like any sort of minimal and experimental techno/dub.

As a CD collector, I was happy to find this compilation of Basic Channel artists. Yeah, I have a turntable and I like vinyl, but I rarely sit down to listen to music that way, so I end up having to rip to CD before I can do stuff like listen in the car or at the gym. It's just inconvenient. Luckily, we can now get some of Basic Channel's awesome dub-techno on CD directly.

The atmosphere is minimal and austere. There aren't a whole lot of gee-whiz sounds on here, but the few sounds these artists use are important and interesting. Anytime I listen to such sparse music, I must focus on the minor details in a way that's nearly impossible with the ADD music of, say Kid606. I like both styles, but they achieve drastically different effects.

There's not much in the way of melody here - just pure groove drenched in reverb and echo. Most tracks start off with a basic idea, develop a bit, grow in intensity, and then fade back out to where they started. It's a simple formula and it risks becoming inundated with a lot of hack non-artists, but fortunately these are all winners.

Fans of minimal techno will dig this. I'm not sure if I could recommend it to any but the most adventurous IDM fans - you wouldn't be turned off, but it may not hold much interest. The slowly evolving, atmospheric nature of these tracks make certain demands on the listener. You need to either concentrate fully, or they'll become background noise, easily ignored.

While the appeal may be limited due to the nature of dub-techno as a style, this is probably as good as it gets. I recommend listening to some samples online. If you like what you hear, you can expect about four to six more minutes of it per track. I think it's worth spending a little time to find the buried secrets of this album.

I purchased this album back in 1995 when it came in a tin box. Never knew what to call it, the cd had no info except for the tracks on the back and distorted cover art that I couldn't read. Yet with a little effort I found it. I purchased it when I was 13 only because the packaging looked interesting.

At 13 it was garbage, but in the present it has become a jewel in my music collection, and a valuable tool for live mixing at parties as a 3rd and 4th channel loop track that I use as a canvas/foundation for my DJing.

This album isn't what I'd call listener friendly, but any good DJ could make good use of such an album. It is an essential tool to my mixing and can be credited for my appeal, and sound asthetic.

this mucic gives me happiness, sunshine in my soul. its a kind of warped house with tonns of grove, made sensitve but firm. flesh and blood. basic channel kix ass! (do you got playlists,drop me a line...)

Many people are hailed as "important", and electronica scene is no exception. While many people credit the "Bellevue Three" (Atkins, May, Saunderson) as the inventors of techno, and rightly hail artists such as the Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada as the innovators of modern electronic music, arguably it is the Basic Channel/ Chain Reaction collective that are probably of the most important producers of techno and modern electronica.

Basic Channel hail from the motherland of post-war electronic music, Germany, and more specifically Berlin. At the time (1990/1993), the techno scene was already floundering, even though it had reached the peak of its initial commercial success.

The "techno sound" was incorporating many pop hooks and sensibilities, and while the "second wave" from Detroit (Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance et al) was just breaking through and rejecting the "rave" elements in the music, it was apparent that new idea's needed to be injected.

Some of those idea's came from Warp Record's release of the "Artificial Intelligence" series which introduced acts like Autechre, Aphex Twin, The Black Dog, F.U.S.E, B12 and Speedy J, but there was a new movement that would directly introduce the new aesthetic of "dub" to electronics- Basic Channel were the leading lights.

While they never gave interviews, and a mystic grew around them and their label (Chain Reaction), it was always apparent that the music came first. This release (first issued in 1995) is a collection of singles mostly drawing on the "ambient" side of releases on vinyl; this latter point is a key point to "understanding" the sound.

What Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus (the brains behind BC) did was to introduce "dubby" sounds to the mix. In most electronic music productions to this point, producers were trying to produce "clean mixes"- free from sonic artefacts like pops, clicks and stutters and separating the sound of the kick drum from the bass. Furthermore techno tracks were indeed becoming shorter so making mixing for DJ's easier.

BC and fellow travellers rejected all these "rules". Every embellishment, every pop, click and distortion was amplified through the use of echo's and reverbs. The bottom end of the bass was made "muddy" to produce a wall of bass noise, often bass lines and kick drums are little more than pulses, while tracks were constructed not through the usual build ups and breakdowns (verse/chorus) of traditional house and techno-but as long evolving tracks that in some cases could last as long as 20 minutes (they have been edited on this release).In this aspect it is more like listening to Stockhausen or musique concrete than dance music.

They also worked within the strict confines of the 4/4 beat, but rather than being rigid, it is loose and evolving. When heard on vinyl, and more importantly in a club consisting of hard surfaces like concrete, the effect is a powerful pulse of bass "anti-matter" where every echo and grain of sound is amplified and modulated back on itself.

To really hear this as it is meant to be heard requires a very good sound system/headphones and the right environment. You also need time and several re-listens as you will never "get it" on first serving.

This is a challenging release to those not so familiar with minimal or dub techno. For me the highlights are the three Radiance tracks, e2e4 Basic Reshape, Presence and Lyot Remix. All the tracks are dark atmospheric soundscapes-but be warned, this is not casual listening music. For those who really want to experience the power of Basic Channel in a more accessible way, then I would suggest looking out for Scion's masterful "Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks"-probably the best minimal techno/dub album bar none.

Also look out for the other Chain Reaction artists-Monolake (who invented the most important music production software-Ableton), Fluxion, Substance, Vainquere, Quantec, Porter Ricks. Echospace from Detroit while "copying" many elements of Basic Channel, refreshed the sound and updated it.

Basic Channel are legends, they turned techno on its head, and brought production values that now seem so common place (such as fuzzy bass lines), they inspired the glitch/micro house/glitch-hop/dub step movement (Pole, Oval, Richie Hawtin to name a few artists) and re-introduced a new audience to dub and versions through the Rhythm and Sound project (digital dub reggae), as well as giving a new lease of life to the electronic scene in general.

Vital stuff!

Basic Channel has become its own description -- and for good reason. How else to describe those warm, dubby sounds, the strict rhythms, the electronic squelches? Basic Channel were innovators of the best kind, and their sound is legendary. On this compilation of their tracks, there's no need for introduction. There's the hiss and crackle of "Mutism" to the warped trickle of "Radiance (II)" and the dubbed out notes of "Lyot" and "Presence" to the more house-based tracks of "Q Loop" and "E3E4 Basic Reshape." Believe me, these are the ones that started it all.