BCD-2

We Say...

Review by Andy Battaglia

Talk of the storied Berlin duo Basic Channel tends to circle around their tactile dub textures and expansive sense of space, both of which, to be sure, deserve talk. But as laid out on BCD-2, the Basic Channel sound could stomp awfully mightily too. More aggressive than the previous compilation BCD, the sequel gathers some of the more directed "techno" tracks that made Basic Channel so important in electronic music starting in the early 1990s.

This is techno in its purest form. From the early days when that music first started drifting out of Detroit, the guys in Basic Channel — Mark Ernestus and Mortiz Von Oswald — picked up the signal and helped forge an ideological bond between that city and theirs, two gutted metropolises with more than a little dystopian haunting in common. What Basic Channel added was a still-stunning ear for production, which plays out in a few different fashions here.

On the fuller end of the sonic spectrum, opener "Enforcement" features an incredibly dense sound-field, with an arpeggiated synth line snaking around a stoically reiterated kick-drum that seems to speed up and slow down as it repeats. Bulbous classics like "Octagon" dine out on disorienting strobe effects that heave back and forth like dub — but much more heavily. And then there's the ceaseless tss-tss hiss of "Phylyps Trak" and the vacuum-sealed crispness that marks the beats in and "Phylyps Trak II," between which lies the magical middle mode of techno at its most meaty and minimal, respectively.

For dance tracks recorded more than a decade ago, Basic Channel's best work remains totally essential — and more than a little instructive for anyone wondering what a synthesis of dance-floor gravity and theoretical weightlessness would sound like.