The beats, largely programmed by Maher, are polyrhytmic in Latin and African styles, while Quine's guitar lines favour drones, inflection and a jagged phrasing.

The latter used the album to incorporate a wide array of influences, including styles of blues, minimalism, psychedelia and country, and musicians such as Miles Davis, Scotty Moore and the Stooges.

Robert Quine and Fred Maher were figures on the avant-new wave and punk funk scenes in New York City, and these roots are evident on Basic.

[4][9] Quine had previously recorded Escape in his living room, and retained the location because "if someone covers over and you have a fruitless day, you haven't wasted any money.

[4] Quine used the recording to "put all [his] influences" into a project,[8] and utilised 16-seconds delays,[7] and a four-track Teac Portastudio, the latter of which the guitarist admired as "there's no planning, no mapping things out, no nest of cables.

"[8] Specifically, the title emerged when the duo were building the tracks, doing the drum programming and 'ambient things'; for "Stray", Quine said he initially contributed a guitar solo, "but then I listened the next day and decided to leave it alone.

"[2] A reviewer for CMJ New Music Report writes that, as with other "interpretive guitarists/avantists" like Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Andy Summers and Phil Manzanera, the "jagged, minimalist phrasing" of Quine's guitar work "has resoundingly a strong ring to it (akin to Frippertronics)", which gets "splatted, improvised and woven" around the programmed polyrhythms, which are in Latin and African styles.

"[1] The album changes mood and color between tracks;[11] several of them are drone-based, while some are esoteric, avant-garde pieces, whereas others have been compared to guitar jams from the late 1960s San Francisco music scene.

[5][8] Diliberto comments that the track's desert feel resembles "a Hugo Montenegro score with lazy, detuned guitar slides playing off Quine's laconic leads.

[4] "'65" features gentle Stratocaster playing with heavy delay,[8] and was described by Quine as the result of listening to Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly" (1974) for "thousands of hours — I'm not exaggerating.

[3] Discussing the track's name and abrupt ending, Quine noted: "I was pushing this Systech overdrive pedal — a very strange fuzz box that has an EQ control to get these nasal sounds — through an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man delay and into a [Tristech] Tube Cube, which is basically a direct box with a feature that says 'overdrive,' but actually tunes in natural harmonics on top, almost like an [Aphex] Aural Exciter.

[13] After its release, Quine called it the only recording of his that he could bear to listen to,[14] later saying: "If people don't appreciate the damn thing, I have no interest in banging my head against the wall.

"[12] She adds that despite the energetic, tense sound, the album "works up a powerful nervous sweat", using a "Lower East Side lingua franca I'd recommend.

[4] Wisconsin State Journal reviewer James Henke remarked that Quine used a wide array of guitar effects to "create some atmospheric instrumental music that's at times as jarring as it is beautiful.

"[19] Reviewers for CMJ New Music Report opined that the best tracks spotlight "the distinctive resiliency of Quine's stylized guitar" and asserted that listeners of the album will "discover that much can happen with very little.

"[18] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau deemed Basic to be as "tough and weird" as Brian Eno's collaboration with Jon Hassell, Fourth World, Vol.

"[11] Reviewing the album for High Fidelity, Sartwell praised the tracks for being "detailed, pleasing, even ravishing" and hailed Quine's concise guitar lines for their "flashes of incisiveness and wit", but adds that despite its distinctive sound, Basic is also "static and at times monotonous.

"[2] In his review for DownBeat, Diliberto believed the album succeeds because of "what's happening beneath and between" the rhythms, championing how Quine "orchestrates in cinemascope" with his varied, multitracked guitar work.

"[1] In a negative review for The Vancouver Sun, Frank Rutter described Basic as "an album of guitar and drum duets that might interest some musicians but it sounded monotonous to me", believing the problem could lay with its originality.

[22] Retrospectively, AllMusic's David Szatmary deems Basic to be a "studied, tempered showcase" for Quine's "tasty guitar licks" and Maher's able backings.

[17] In Trouser Press, Fleischmann named it "a mesmerizing no-frills celebration of the electric guitar", adding: "Don't look for memorable tunes or even clever tricks — this is a player's album, amazingly pure, though not so simple.

"[10] Basic was one of several mid-1980s albums recorded by collaborative duos working with drum machines and incorporating heavy overdubbing, alongside Fred Frith's and Henry Kaiser's Who Needs Enemies?

[5] However, in Pitchfork, Blackwell writes that although the album's sounds – its mix of "programmed drums, ambient drift, and indulgent guitar explorations" – were outré in 1984, they "quickly became dated.