eMusic Review 0
Listening to Basic Channel's much imitated palette of muted, deep synth chords, spiraling wormholes of delay, and martial percussive chugging, few would guess that it would give birth to an entire imitative genre, but with the seemingly inescapable tag of "minimal" still being bandied about 11 years later and counting, it has. This is your one-stop introduction to German minimal techno at its most beguiling and powerful. Released on CD in 1995, this compilation combines key 12" tracks from the label's back catalogue with unreleased material and "re-edits" that capture these cyclic patterns torquing and rotating in mid-air. It's as much a matter of what has been removed as what has been included; the Basic Channel crew here bypasses its dancefloor rulers (such as their 1994 behemoth "Phylyps Trak") in favor of selections geared to home listening and reflection.
