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Scion | Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks

Hallelujah for this Basic Channel gift from Tresor.
CD, Tresor/EFA

Tekst: Omar Muñoz-Cremers

Publicatiedatum: 03 augustus 2002

An unexpected gift from Tresor, but somehow a very necessary release to complete the picture of one of the quintessential techno groups ever. Over the years, the fame of Basic Channel and their fabled output of nine 12-inches released in a time span of merely two years (1993 - 1995) has grown to proportions only reserved for Underground Resistance. When, at the height of their powers, Basic Channel decided to terminate the group/label, they released a CD compilation as a sort of memorial, and it immediately was praised and enshrined as one of the great techno albums of all time. No arguing there; the Basic Channel CD, in retrospect, seems a pivotal album, claiming back the initiative for techno as a creative force during a period when people were claiming it was reaching dead ends, thereby opening possibilities that we're still mining in 2002. But in spite of all this praise, there was one problem with the album: It did highlight the ambient side of the Basic Channel sound, eschewing the more dance-floor-friendly side of their output. The Scion album finally balances this "fault."

Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus fiercely stay clear of any direct involvement with this new Basic Channel project, instead handing over the master tapes to trustworthy curators Pete Kuschnereit and Rene Löwe, who both recorded for the Basic Channel offshoot label Chain Reaction as Substance and Vainquer. In the pioneering spirit of both the Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen DJ Kicks mixes, Richie Hawtin's Closer to the Edit project, or even Bill Laswell's rearranging of Miles Davis on Panthalassa, Kuschnereit and Löwe under the name Scion take the music apart and put it back together in new and interesting ways. The nine parts that form the mix are denser than the original, and are, at times, extremely minimal pieces. Here, the pagodas of heavenly sound are infested with the characteristic blocks of dirt, echoes, and shimmers, forming layered tracks that are both new and recognizable. Yet the most important result lies not so much in the "process," but in the "arrange" part of the title; that is, hearing Basic Channel imbedded in a mix. This is, after all, music that should be danced to, not catalogued by collectors.

Out of this, highlights materialize. Part 4 uses the Phylyps II/I rhythm track over which dazzling bleeps create impossible quantum melodies. Part 7, mainly consisting of Cyrus: Enforcement, relentlessly loops a searching metallic rattlesnake riff, suggesting new forms of pleasurable madness awaiting discovery, eventually fusing into what arguably is their crowning dance floor achievement: the driving dub techno of Phylyps II, with its sublime play of echoes, shaping melodies into magical forms that would become a special template for other classic tracks under the Maurizio and Rhythm & Sound guises. Best of all is the closing segment where Scion finally feel they can transcend the source material. From the reshape of The Climax, Octagon, and Cyrus: Recall, a beautiful maze is built that plays with your perception of time: Music whirls around in an alien logic while trails of sound shoot off into the past, reappearing in the future. Often, when Basic Channel is discussed, the word "timeless" appears. There is a quality of timelessness in this music; all those vapors, echoes, and shimmers invoking shades of lost memories of ecstasy (the womb, heaven, the mother, orgasm, drugs), rather than the overused and trivial slogan of timelessness signifying classic, canon, beyond criticism. But I would suggest Basic Channel is far more localized in time and space, the sound of Europe in the nineties (or should that be the sound of a promised Europe, now lost). It is the rare species of music that defines an era, forming a monument to a civilization, the soundtrack of a golden age. There can be no higher praise.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/scion/arrange-and-process-basic-channel-tracks/1754/
Meer Scion op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/scion