Basic Channel - Octagon

Basic Channel’s landmark ’Octagon / Octaedre’ session was first issued in 1994 and formed a crucial, entrancing treatise on lessons learned from Detroit techno and the principles of Jamaican dub. Aside to their Cyrus 12”, it contains the quickest cuts in Basic Channel’s tool box, both riding over the 140bpm barrier in step with the escalating tempos of Motor City and European techno, but uniquely undressed of snares and the prevailing tropes of the time. 

There’s frankly fuck-all to it - just subbass-kick/hi-hat/chords/noise - but the way they rinsed out those elements with judicious use of FX for 13 minutes on each side was completely unprecedented in shape and effect, and birthed a generation of copycats in the process. We cannot recommend it any higher as a lodestone for DJs learning to mix vinyl, particularly fast techno, but it also blends beautifully well with strains of electro, UK steppers dub, UKG/dubstep and all that good stuff that dances around and on beats descended from the African diaspora.

BC07