Cyrus

A legendary high-water mark of ‘90s techno is back in circulation with BC’s pulsating classic, its thunderous Mills mix, and the body-melting ‘Recall’

Working under the Cyrus moniker, Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald birthed the resoundingly influential Basic Channel project with ‘Enforcement’ in 1993. Paralleling and interweaving their concurrent Maurizio releases, as Basic Channel they hailed the harder edge of Detroit techno and European acid with a peerless touch of Berlin minimalist experimentation, reducing those styles’ formulas to a propulsive, aerodynamic flux of fundamentals that left an indelible and enduring mark on the dancefloor’s collective imagination.

‘Enforcement’ also bears the series’ strongest ties with Detroit, explicitly due to its incendiary Mills Mix, and more implicitly as it was made with equipment sourced from a musical hardware shop in the Motor City. The same kit would be also be used on the M-Series recordings, but here it was harnessed at its most forceful and shark-eyed in the virulent acidic gnash and pounding 909 of ‘Enforcement’, only just-about tempered by the duo’s discrete digits on the mixing desk, tweaking envelopes 13 minutes of definitive sublime tension and hypnotic traction. Factor in the roiling, Schnitzler-esque acid pulse of its bare-bones ‘Recall’ and you have a stone cold essential - arguably one of the C.20th’s finest.