A trip through the chill side of Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald’s catalog, featuring breathtaking explorations of texture.

Following last month’s deep dive into the musical ties between Berlin and Detroit, BMG and Erika are back with another close-up on the German capital’s rich techno history, this time by tracing a sometimes-overlooked thread within the sprawling catalog of two of the genre’s great masters. Although best known as the dub techno pioneers behind production duo and label Basic Channel, Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald crafted no small number of breathtaking ambient cuts over their long collaboration, endlessly dissecting and iterating upon their own material across countless aliases and imprints, breaking the sounds they loved down to their most rudimentary textural building blocks. In this installment of Interdimensional Transmissions, our hosts trace this theme through music from Quadrant, Rhythm & Sound, Round Five and other Basic Channel-related projects, all while explaining how these granular sonic explorations can enrich our understanding of techno and its conceptual foundations. The episode opens with a half-hour mix from Erika, consisting entirely of records she bought at Ernestus’ Hard Wax store.