Discrepant Vinyl & CDs

Review: To say Goncarlo F Cardosa lives an enviable life would be nothing short of an understatement. If this is your first meeting with his islands series, the ongoing project sees the man in question - boss of the Discrepant label - head out to various rocks in various seas to record what he hears, and then piece this back together in a way that may or may not make sense to anyone other than him. To be frank, logic matters not when you're making such transportive work.

So last time we were in Zanzibar, whereas now we find ourselves washed up on the shores of Borneo. The result is something that might not immediately place listeners on the Malay peninsula, but certainly takes us out to some far flung, rain forested land or other. Sounds of jungle precipitation and species, deep, moody almost monastic vocal numbers, lighter, refrain-led ambient workouts - as varied as the destination itself.

Review: Laurent Jeaneau's Discrepant imprint delivers another burst of magnetic outsiderism thanks to this latest LP by Algerian bass wizard, El Mahdy Jr - this being his debut for the label and only his second full-length work. The North African beat experimenter has previously put out material on the excellent Zam Zam and Aisha Devi's Danse Noire, and we're always curious to hear his very own brand of morphed n' warped electronics, a pleasure on the ears and a blow to the chest. Ghost Tapes travels across the two sides of the wax plate, with Mahdy going deeper and more cavernous than ever before thanks to flurries of field recordings, vocal samples, fuzzy drones and swarms of dubbed-out noise. A good old mash-up of everything that we love. Hot.

Review: Tenerife-based trio LAGOSS are back with a second album of escapist electronic sounds. Goncalo F. Cardoso, Mladen Kurajica and Daniel Garcia leave behind the mega-mix vignette of their first album for a more song-based but still avant-gard collection here. Their raw, live jamming style mixes up tropicalia and electronic freakouts with found sounds, percussion, bird calls and rich samples that all bring these tracks to life as it moves through various different moods, gores, genres and eras with style. Somehow inviting yet eerie, this a very personal sound world but we're all welcome inside.

Review: Inspired by the idea of an ocean of islands - an Aquapelago - this latest offering from the Discrepant imprint is nothing short of a curveball for those expecting to be lulled into a soft, blissful sleep by the sound of waves crashing accompanied by gentle chords. Or at least parts of it are, and none of it is remotely that obvious or twee. Allow us to divulge.

Opening with Sugai Ken's 'Boundary', you could be forgiven for thinking you'd accidentally hit play on one of those YouTube videos with an AI narrator. Spoken fragments of text describe Ningen, a humanoid-whale creature from Japanese folklore, here read as a statement about Industrial whaling. Cue a weird medley of noises that wouldn't sound out of place in a 1970s sci fi movie. From thereon in, we're taken deeper into this imaginary region, rich textures and deep-rooted melodies captivating pulling us down below the surface.