Chain Reaction Appreciation

#1

I’ve been really getting into Basic Channel’s sublabel Chain Reaction, especially the more singular works like Hallucinator - Sethos and of course the Shinichi Atobe stuff.

So I thought it’d be nice to start a thread appreciating the sickest dub techno out there, both from the period CR was active as the stuff that came out last week, like uon’s EP on West Mineral:

Boomkat, one of my primary sources for interesting music writing, says: “Where the A-side feels like floating in a lush mass, the bass-heavy articulation of his B-side’s J may well urge listeners onto the ‘floor with the same, inexorable traction of classic Vainqueur records, and in a way smartly reflects uon’s mutable DJ style, before the aqueous qualities of his final track Bus soothes to a deeper blue state of loved-up introspection which, like Solaris, could have have easily taken up a side to itself.”

What are your picks?

#2

Yeah that Uon release is very cool. Maybe not as that Pendant one, but good.
Boomkat used to be my first and primary source of music too, but sadly they really lose their magic touch somehow. I can only save stuff from DDS & Ecstatic from the last couple of years…they’re too much into that grime side and endless Hospital Prod stuff (even that Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is waaaaay overrated!).

Anyway, Chain Reaction: of course Atobe, Porter Ricks and Fluxion were already repressed but i’m really looking forward to this one

#3

Cool one, gotta check it out! Yeah I’m talking more about Boomkat’s reviews, often they put me onto music I’ve never heard of, or draw links between certain sounds that are very interesting to me. Oh and there’s humour too!

Interesting question, although somewhat off-topic, is what it means that record shops (instead of music publications) provide the most interesting writing? Well maybe something for a new thread on here, haha.

#4

I thought that the boomkat writing was about 90% PR from the label and only 10% original material. I don’t mind that, I still find it useful. But I perceive two types of write ups on there. Maybe it’s just me…

sorry, i got distracted there…

I’m just finding my way in dub techno really so came in to follow. I did really enjoy the uon EP as well

#5

Boomkat’s reviews still at the top in some cases but yeah as you pointed up they’re really good at pumping up only certain spheres of the scene… also found it quite weird they didn’t even stock last Claro Intelecto on Delsin who was a column of early Modern Love :frowning:

#6

Yeah there’s a lot of label jibberish too, but was for example thinking of this paragraph on a recent Villalobos remix EP: “Villalobos and Loderbauer then combine as VILOD for an 11 minute reshuffle of Uncertain Grace hingeing on pendulous metallic claps and a worm farm’s worth of wriggling bass, then Villalobos goes it alone with Lenina, turning in a tangle of sloshing, splayed rhythms that sounds like a jazz band playing underwater and offers pluralised possibilities for the dancers who dare to actually express themselves, rather than just do the usual line dance and finger point. You know, that Solomun move?! Fuck that and dance to this instead.”

#7

That record seems to have received little attention in general despite being incredibly good.

#8

Vladislav Delay - Multila…FOR SURE.

Atobe? meh…

#9

@A.V definitely think there’s a pretty rich history of record shops producing interesting, idiosyncratic music reviews. Forced Exposure comes to mind immediately (Keith Fullerton Whitman being one of their star writers and who later went on to start his own shop), Other Music used to have great reviews, probably loads of others, too…

#10

Yeah that’s exactly what I was wondering about, if there are more shops like Boomkat / Low Company (obvs the answer is yes) and why they produce (at times) more interesting content than music writing publications, imo.

#11

This is not a compilation by Basic Channel, but this one includes a track by the voice of BASIC CHANNEL (R&S).
The leggendary Paul St. Hilaire Aka Tikiman!

#12

Hardwax are selling the digital of at least one Various Artists (T++) release (Decay Product which asfaik isn’t available digitally anywhere else) in case anyone is interested.

#13

Good call! Some CR digitals on Scion Versions available there as well…

#14

Such a good label! This is my favourite, was proper happy when I found a copy of it in Cologne

#15

Equator Music on this release is so so good! Discovered it this week, prob the only classic deep house track on CR??

#16

Haha yeah, I think apart from that one this is the closest CR have come to deep house (still much more dubtechno tho) :slight_smile:

#17

Jumped in to agree that new Uon record is great. Interested to hear people’s suggestions of contemporary dub techno, a lot of it winds up sounding a bit too derivative of BC.

There was a good Chain Reaction tribute show from Bake on rinse a few years ago:

#18

Yeah that one is amazing! Saw him tweet recently that he might be doing another one… Fingers crossed!

#19

Quite interesting that strands of the CR sound ended up being assimilated in to that more mainstream P-Bar / Steffi groove oriented techno house sound from the 2005s onwards. I definitely hear that pre-echo in Relish.

#20

Really interested in this intersection of deep house and dub techno! The most obvious example is of course the ‘Round’ series by Ernestus and Von Oswald, but I feel like this record by Luomo (AKA Vladislav Delay) is worth mentioning here as well:

Discovered this a couple of weeks ago and it fills me with joy about the musical worlds I know nothing of, but also with dread cause I’ll probably never hear a lot of great stuff as well…