【コラム】 Basic Channel──ベルリン・ダブテクノの起点

Column en 90s Dub Dub Techno Techno

01 Nov 2025

Prologue: From anonymous noise to a silent revolution

Text: mmr｜Theme: The “abyss of sound” born from the underground of Berlin in the 1990s—The history of the creation of Basic Channel and Dub Techno

In 1993, just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The city is still being rebuilt, with abandoned factories and warehouses being turned into clubs.Tresor, E-Werk, Planet, and eventually Berghain. Amidst this chaos, Basic Channel quietly caused a seismic shift in acoustics.

Their music wasn’t minimal, techno, or house. Space resonates in the depths of the rhythm. ──This created a new ``depth’’ in club culture around the world.

Rhythm breathes between silence and reverberation.

Chapter 1: Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus - two people of anonymity

Basic Channel is a unit formed by German musicians Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus. Their backgrounds are surprisingly different.

Moritz von Oswald: Former percussionist.In the 1980s, he was active in the pop group Palais Schaumburg.He began exploring African music and dub early on.
Mark Ernestus: Founder of the record shop “Hard Wax”.He played an extremely important role in the distribution and reception of Detroit techno.

This perspective that crosses the boundaries between commerce and creativity also leads to the later philosophy of the label. In 1993, they released several 12-inches under the name “Basic Channel”.There was almost no information written on the jacket, just an inorganic embossed logo. It was also the first attempt to brand ``anonymity.’’

Chapter 2: Rhythm Hollow──Impact of “Phylyps Trak”

His early work, Phylyps Trak (1993), baffled DJs around the world. The sound, which combined the hard rhythms of Detroit techno with the spatial processing of dub, completely changed the depth of club sound.

The kick is not muddy, but it oozes like air.
The snare is about to disappear, and the reverberation of the delay becomes the main melody.
“Decay”, not melody, builds music.

Music critic Simon Reynolds later said:

“Their music transformed techno from architecture'' toweather phenomenon.’’

It was just sonic climate change.

Chapter 3: Reinventing Dub - From Jamaica to Berlin

What Basic Channel was quoting was the idea of Jamaican dub from the 70s. The reverberation sculptures of King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry have been recreated as a digital process.

What mattered to them was the courage to mute the sound. The effect was not a decoration, but a ``structural operation’’ that created the acoustic space itself. In other words, music is not a material but a “place” – this philosophy later defined Dub Techno.

Chapter 4: Chain Reaction──Chain of Abstraction

In 1995, Basic Channel established a sub-label, Chain Reaction. Here, a more anonymous and experimental project developed. The genealogy of later Berlin electronic music intersects here, including Monolake, Porter Ricks, Vladislav Delay, and Substance.

Chain Reaction features:

No artist name on the jacket, just the catalog number
A sense of unity as if all sound sources were sharing the “same space”
Not mass production, but a ideological network based on a chain of sounds

As a result, Basic Channel became more of a platform for sonic philosophy than a ``label’’.

Chapter 5: Rhythm & Sound─The voice deep in the silence

In the 2000s, the two entered a new phase under the name Rhythm & Sound. Here, we invited reggae vocalists from Jamaica and Germany, including Tikiman, Cornell Campbell, and Jennifer Lara, to create a deeper fusion of voice'' andreverberation.’’

Songs such as King In My Empire'' andSee Mi Yah’’ have a structure that sounds more like they would be played ``inside’’ the speakers than in a club. I regained my human trembling in the coldness of digital dub.

They continue to refuse interviews and remain invisible. But the sound speaks. It was an “anonymous spirituality” and a post-human prayer that went beyond techno minimalism.

Chapter 6: Sound system philosophy and Berghain and beyond

Basic Channel’s philosophy is deeply rooted in contemporary Berlin club culture, including Berghain/Panorama Bar. Its foundation is the concept of ``acoustic community,’’ or the belief that listening bodies share a single space through a gigantic sound system.

The mastering philosophy of Dubplates & Mastering, which they were involved in designing, also emphasizes “depth” rather than sound pressure. It is a technique for making silence heard, which is the exact opposite of commercial music.

Chapter 7: Influence and Diffusion – Current Location of Dub Techno

Today, Basic Channel’s influence can be seen everywhere.

Artist	Features	Inheritance
Deepchord / Echospace	Spatial techno from Detroit	Organic expansion of delay
Fluxion	Minimal dub from Greece	Building feel directly descended from Chain Reaction
Gas (Wolfgang Voigt)	Fusion of ambient + classical	A metaphor that uses reverberation as a “forest”
Yagya	Icelandic clarity	Breathability of rhythm
cv313	Analog-oriented sound pressure construction	Spiritual inheritance of Basic Channel

This trend is common among artists who still pursue “depth” even in a digital environment. They all believe in freedom built in reverberation.

Chapter 8: Acoustic Model──“Dub Space Structure”

graph TD A[Original sound Source] --> B[Delay/Feedback] B --> C[Reverb Chamber] C --> D[Low Pass Filter] D --> E[Sub Bass Reinforcement] E --> F[Silence / Decay Zone] F --> A style A fill:#333,stroke:#0f0,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff style F fill:#000,stroke:#0f0,color:#fff

The above diagram is an abstracted model of the Basic Channel acoustic design. The end of a rhythm becomes the starting point of the next reverberation - this cyclical structure forms the basis of their sound.

Chronology: History of Basic Channel and derivative labels

Year	Main events
1990	Mark Ernestus opens Hard Wax (Berlin)
1993	“Phylyps Trak” released under the name Basic Channel
1994	Completed the series up to Basic Channel No. 6.Representative works such as “Quadrant Dub”
1995	Established Chain Reaction.Experimental dub techno begins to spread
1996	Maurizio series start (M series)
1999	Started Rhythm & Sound, started collaborating with Jamaican vocalists
2003	“Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists” released
2010	Moritz von Oswald Trio started (with Max Loderbauer and Tony Allen)
2020s	Wave of reappraisal, Dub Techno revival, spreading mainly on Bandcamp

Conclusion: “Eternal reverberation” in silence

The sound of Basic Channel is timeless and still remains in the “present tense.” The reason for this is that they didn’t just create techno, they rebuilt the very act of listening.

The echo never ends. It is a lingering scent of time, and a tunnel that leads the listener to the outside of space.

And the ripples emanating from Berlin at the end of the 20th century continue to silently reverberate underground all over the world.

“When you listen to the sound of Basic Channel, you are listening to the space itself, not the music.”

Explore more like this

Column en 90s Dub Dub Techno Techno

【コラム】ダブ（DUB）音楽の誕生と拡張宇宙 ― 音響の再構築から始まった革命

Prologue: A revolution born from the “reverberation” of sound

01 Nov 2025

【コラム】ダブ（DUB）音楽の誕生と拡張宇宙 ― 音響の再構築から始まった革命

序章：音の「残響」から生まれた革命

01 Nov 2025