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CREP 105LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/17/2025
An extremely prolific artist, whose work encompasses composition, opera, theatre, radio plays, film or performance, Ergo Phizmiz returns to the Discrepant fold long after his Two Quartets and Disco Carousel -- under his given DW Robertson name -- albums. A purveyor of the Creative Commons rights, Phizmiz has been deploying much of his work on the ever-expanding Free Music Archive directed by WFMU since the early 2000's, creating a sprawling and defiant body of work that defies given and stale notions of sound hierarchies, history and copyright through a process that comprises collage, sampling, reappropriation, songwriting, covers and pretty much any available media with a playful and thoughtful approach. For this new Discrepant entry, Phizmiz goes back in time to push into the future a number of pieces recorded more than two decades ago creating this perpetual motion outside a linear chronologic progression. Anticipating by almost 20 years the memefication of ASMR videos, Selected Ambient & ASMR Works 2001-2003 -- itself a pun on the AFX classics -- embraces the ambient tag not at its functional face value, but instead as a means to the "evocation of imaginary spaces, and correspondingly the invention of their sonic environments." Collecting recordings from a myriad of instruments -- violin, xylophone, banjo, kora, found percussion and so on -- shortwave radio and field recordings to create loops with different lengths that play with and/or against themselves continuously in a process "(dis)conjunction" not far removed from Feldman's Why Patterns? or hip-hop's sampledelia. A free-floating temporal space that collapses the flashing images of Angelfire pages unto Web 2.0 sense of displacement.
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CREP 106LP
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After their Discrepant debut -- OOOO (CREP 060LP, 2018) -- Lisbon-based travelers Jibóia return to the fold with another offering of globetrotting psychedelia with Salar. With the core trio of Óscar Silva, Ricardo Martins, and Mestre André augmented by a stellar parade of collaborators on various roles, Salar further expands on the transglobal visions by now pretty trademarked by the band. Interspersed among shorter vignettes for drums, saxophone and bass, each of the more fully fleshed tracks casts a guest to elevate Jibóia's music to uncharted realms -- both in a mystical and geographical sense. Opener "Selar" summons the cello of songstress Joana Guerra for a skewed dialogue with Silva's guitar, propelled by Martins' drums and percussion and André's electronic textures into 4 minutes and 20 seconds that feel epic -- if there was any psychedelic numerological symbolism needed. On "Solar," Silva's non-western plucking rides on for Yaw Tembe's trumpet to veer in a multitude in directions, while the mysterious "Sitar" conjures the voice of Moroccan musician Ayoub El Ayadi for a contemplative nighttime prayer. Elsewhere, guitarist Rui Carvalho aka Filho da Mãe injects dissonant guitar lines unto "Sarar"'s pummeling dance and Pedro Augusto's electronics hover below the shapeshifting dynamics of "Sonar," among mesmerizing keyboard lines. "Salir," featuring Daiyen Jone's enchanted flute, brings the album to a close at its most reflective, all crepuscular synth lines and reverbed handclaps.
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CREP 108LP
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Continuing his fruitful relationship with Discrepant after the third volume of his ongoing Organic Music Tape Series on Sucata Tapes, Tiago Sousa returns with two long-form pieces for organ with A Thousand Strings. A self-explanatory title in itself, A Thousand Strings drifts fluidly into a celestial realm of cascading melodies and cycling patterns that never feel forced or strict throughout its two hypnotic tracks. Pulsating with life and ecstatic abandon. Taking cues from the tradition of American minimalists like Steve Reich and, particularly, Terry Riley, the Portuguese composer's work flows with a life of his own, that, while acknowledging those influences, transcends them into his own signature. On the A side, "A Thousand Strings" goes seamlessly from intertwining crepuscular harmonies to ascending keyboard runs in the manner of "Persian Surgery Dervishes" finishing with a coda of rhythmic marimba-like pulses. On the flipside, "The Things Passed" creates this maze-like tapestry of melodies that seem to drift apart only to converge back again into its internal process before setting on sustained tones infused with a sense of longing. For all things passed. For what is yet to come. Recorded by Tiago Sousa and mastered by Rashad Becker.
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2LP
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CREP 100LP
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More than two years after the release of Impressões de Outra Ilha, Discrepant's head honcho returns home under his birth name with the appropriately titled Exotic Immensity. Conjured from the seeds of an exhibition of dioramas at Le Bon Accueil in Rennes, this double LP feels quietly epic in scope, a sprawling travelogue through imagined scenarios and what if possibilities. Discarding the more-rough around the edges collages of previous works under a myriad of aliases, Cardoso's approach here is more meticulously composed, with seamless transitions within his own personal soundworld giving way to this hallucinated landscape of field recordings, subtle electronic tweaks, cascading patterns, queasy ambiences and kösmiche-like synth harmonies. Perfectly embodied in Evan Crankshaw's cut up poem, filled with occult and sci-fi references such as Agrippa's Book of the Occult, William Blake's Book of Urizen, Dr. Moreau, or '50s pop-science books, the music on Exotic Immensity transverses time and cartography in a deeply personal matter, from the cricket-like textures and reverse loops of "Réplica(s)" until the closing moments with the touching chord progression and mangled voices of "Pó Nuno." In-between, the foghorn meets bass clarinet melody of "Ossos" recalls the unassuming but essential harmonic patterns of Laurence Crane, surrounded by an almost percussive sheet of field recordings that drift into the gliding synth tones of "Desumanização (I & II)" until tape orchestral swells carry listeners into the aether. "Aquário Novo Mundo" brims in an undisplaced cartography, from electronic marimba stabs to synth choirs, the call of the loom to labyrinthine keyboard harmonies and underwater radiance. The muffled looped rhythmic sequence of "Imagem/Miragem," cut by the glow of cascading synths doesn't offer a reply. Nor does it need to.
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CREP 103LP
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The long running vessel for Cameron Stallones' psychedelic excursions, Sun Araw, returns to Discrepant after 2023's split with Tarzana via Keroxen sister label. Without much precedent in his own -- already wide-ranging -- back-catalog, Cetacean Sensation discards the dubby vibes, psych-rock sunburnt jams, tropical visions, or stalking sensibilities of such classic efforts as On Patrol or Ancient Romans towards a deeply focused and vivid solitary approach, while still retaining this Sun Araw blissed out escapist feeling. Composed of hydrophone recordings of whales and dolphins sourced during a summer in Galicia, Cetacean Sensation paints an impressionistic and sensory floating canvas that expertly escapes both academic-like documentarian purposes and any new-age spa vibrations one could associate with such subject matter. Processing those raw recordings into alluring collages that flow gracefully between moments of clear eco-location and submerged impressions of wildlife social dynamics. By the third track -- "Dance of the Minke"-- listeners are introduced to this ringing MIDI tone that evokes a CD-ROM era of mystic educational programs and click-and-deploy strategies that still feel very much like an unfulfilled future, conjured again by "Spider Crab Elegy's" sparse keyboard pads and sound effects that give way to this properly elegiac tentative melody. "The Spider Crab Point" ends the album on a more uneasy vibe, with synth tones pointing towards no particular direction, confounding and strangely inviting at the same time. As sensations often do. Music written and produced by Cameron Stallones using hydrophones and digital synthesis. Recorded in 2019 in Galicia, ES Mastering by Rashad Becker.
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CREP 104LP
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Born in 1977, in Malang, East Java, Wukir Suryadi began playing music for theatre at the age of 12 with the Idiot Theater Studio, and later with the Rendra Theater Workshop. In his solo work, and as a member of Senyawa, Error Scream, Bendera Hitam Setengah, Potro Joyo, and other groups, Wukir breaks the boundaries of traditional music, death metal and avant-garde performance. On this new release, Cycle & Prayer, recorded in 2023, he expands the edges of his unique artistic world further, by digging in to meditative improvisation, art, and community building in his home workshop in the mountains of central Java. These recordings vibrate inwards, toward the microcosmic ecologies of forests and rivers; they distort outwards, resonating with global waves of apocalyptic change that are forcing all living beings to the edges of existence on earth. The result is a meditative poem that moves, as its titles announce, from phenomena to phenomena, praying that humans find a way out from the depths of the depths to the light that illuminates the soul. An essential mode of creative work for Wukir is the creation of unique instruments, using these sound sources as "bullets of expression." In addition to the spear-like tube zither Bambu Wukir, he has created the Solet, Enthong, Garu, Luku, Arrows, and Industrial Mutant instruments, which in addition to being used in live performance, have been exhibited in the Instrument Builders Project and the 2017 Jakarta Biennale. On this recording, he uses the simple Cetta guitar, an instrument designed in Bali and made for Indonesian children and local communities of folk and popular musicians, in order to explore the different sonic characteristics of a more "normal" instrument built from local wood. The themes of the album -- cycle and prayer -- arise from a foreboding series of meta-events that shook Indonesia and the world over the past years, following one after the other: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian-Russian war, the Kanjuruhan Stadium tragedy in which football supporters were gassed and killed by police, revelations of government failures and corruption, the rise of personal vehicles, the increasing disturbance of natural patterns of the rainy season and other ecological cycles.
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CREP 109LP
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A quietly influential figure among electronic and experimental circles since the late '90s, Berlin-based sound artist Hanno Leichtmann has been developing a sprawling and idiosyncratic vision both as a creator and curator. With a keen sense for charting new territories, Leichtmann's work spawns a multitude of languages that go from delicate ambient excursions to techno explorations or abstract sceneries on numerous sound installations, releases on such esteemed labels like Entr'acte or The Tapeworm and collaborations with artists like Valerio Tricoli or Jan Jelinek. A reflection of his keen sense of discovery. Centered around the Villa Aurora Organ, an intriguing and mostly unknown instrument built in 1928/29 by the Artcraft Organ Company in Santa Monica, California, Outerlands presents a deeply personal approach to the instrument's particular properties, very much in line with Discrepant's ethos. Consisting of a pipe organ, a wall mounted marimba and a two octave tubular bells/chimes ensemble, remotely controllable by MIDI, the Villa Aurora Organ's rich palette of sounds is translated into 12 short tracks capable of conveying the mesmerizing spirits of minimalism, exotica and devotional music. Starting with the ecstatic sound of the pipe organ, "Lucero" sets up the hypnotic mood for Outerland's excursions through moments of spiraling repetition -- "Tramonto" -- blissful contemplation -- "Sunset" or "Notteargenta" -- or underlying tension -- "Coperto." "Espera" amps up the unease, with queasy organ tones lurking beneath marimba harmonic motifs that wouldn't sound out of place on some survival horror movie, while "Miramar" or "Revello" bring an uncanny sense of familiarity through its repetitive melodies. Drifting seamlessly through a variety of moods that somehow feel connected - the outerlands are within you, if you allow yourself to let go.
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CREP 099LP
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Part of a (very) loose but somewhat like-minded kaleidoscope where one can trace something like a Portuguese hauntology, centered around labels like Russian Library or Prisma Sonora Records, Alexandre Centeio joins Discrepant with the surefire release of Panorama. A multi-instrumentalist and sound artist based in Porto, Centeio -- who is also part of Stellarays and The Murmurous Playground -- delivers his second album under his own name after 2022's Movanta. Signaling a departure from the intimate synth driven beautifully soothing landscapes of Movanta while still working within a realm where space and memory play a significant part of both escapism and connection, Panorama opens itself up to a "surrealistic soundscape filled with real and dreamt sound," perfectly illustrated by Ruca Bourbon's artwork. A sonic fiction conjured from a variety of sources -- hand drums, disembodied voices, scraps of unknown realities, skewed loops, oneiric collages, flutes, spectral synths -- that float freely between disruption and continuity but within their own internal logic. A very particular and hallucinatory one at that. Collapsing notions of time and geography in an aural canvas totally aligned with Discrepant's ethos. Panorama indeed.
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CREP 010X-LP
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Discrepant re-presents the vinyl edition of Lebanese trio Malayeen. Malayeen is the project of Lebanese musicians Raed Yassin (keyboards, turntables, and electronics), Charbel Haber (electric guitar and electronics) and Khaled Yassine (darbouka, percussion). Born from Yassin and Haber's love for the music of quintessential Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid, Malayeen disassembles and re-configures the work and style of the iconic guitarist innovative take on Arabic music. The final result makes for an original and unique update of Khorshid and belly dancing inspired songs from the past. Over the course of seven compositions, appropriately named after Khorshid and famous belly dancers from the Arabic diaspora, the three musicians' varied backgrounds and techniques collide and coalesce in an experimental yet magical fashion, not actually playing Khorshid's music, but inspiring themselves from the cult guitarist's genius to create something completely new, modern and unexpected. A unique LP featuring the combined talents by key players of the Lebanese avant-garde. Design by Studio Safar S.A.L.
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CREP 101LP
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Lisbon based keyboardist, João "Shela" Pereira, a frequent collaborator with many local bands (Paus, Rinding Pânico, LAmA, Linda Martini, and others) presents a new strangely haunting album, TV Songs. A compendium of spontaneous notes of ideas on the piano, to the rhythm of a television set in the background, these are scraps of expression in a form of dirty bucolic sketches aspiring to a hypothetical larger, washed, pristine composition. They live best as a hypothesis, an aspiration, in infinity.
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CREP 094LP
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More than a decade after the release of Land Lines, the mythical Humboldt County, California based duo of Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay reappears seemingly out of nowhere with Atheistsaregods. With past releases on such cult-like labels as Root Strata, Weird Forest, Blackest Rainbow, or Digitalis, Starving Weirdos were an indelible part of a sprawling and loose network of artists in Northern America whose DIY work ethic and extreme activity revolved around shoestring-budget constant touring, numerous limited editions on CDR, tape, and vinyl, and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of genre. Out of that cauldron, Starving Weirdos stood out as one of the most persistent and visionary acts, developing a mind-altering body of work that went from warm soundscapes through droney digressions, freeform improvisation, and raucous noise summoned from a myriad of instrumentation and low budget processing -- vocals, keyboards, violin, flute, percussion, and an assortment of less identifiable sound sources. Ten years on their legacy remains a timeless and wildly under-appreciated one, but hopefully this new album will shine a light on their idiosyncratic approach. As time itself was never a constraint. This is music suspended outside of it. Right from the start with the echoing percussion, dissonant keys and processed vocals of "Haiku Nagasaki", Atheistsaregods draws a continuous flux of psychedelic elevation that goes from the gloomy electronic motifs not unlike the early Cluster vibes of "Invocation" into the dank percussive maze of the appropriately titled "Barulho do Samba". The self-titled track induces a sense of post-apocalyptic vertigo via hallucinatory scraps of voice, suspended synth tones and reverberating field recordings, connecting into the droney mystics of "Dudukahar (Reed Prayer)". Coming full circle, "For Vinny" brings back the echoing percussion amidst hypnotic cello lines until it drifts off into the unknown. With the same palpable sense of urgency, Starving Weirdos feel as vital as ever. Welcome back. Artwork by Mioshe. Mastered by Rashad Becker.
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CREP 102LP
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"This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels -- around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved." --Don Draper
Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind's eye -- projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listener's mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism. Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape-recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the '60s and '70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from Vernon's own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that he has collected over the past twenty years. Using these found slideshow commentaries as a framework, a series of musical soundscapes have been created to bring the absent images to life, activating the listeners' imagination in the classic tradition of "cinema for the ears". It's a little like looking through a family photo album where only the handwritten captions and mounting corners remain; the photographs themselves have all been removed. The evocative rattle and clack of the projector shuffles through different slides as the fragile voices of tour guides accompany you on a sonic journey that fractures time -- and through the cracks, the past bleeds through into the present.
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CREP 098LP
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Eight years almost to the day after releasing his unique re-interpretation album of his field recordings made in the late '90s in Tanzania, Kink Gong is back with another volume of bushmen madness. Here's what Kink Gong aka Laurent Jeanneau has to say about his end of millennium trip: "My experience in Tanzania is now over 20 years and most of the so-called remix was started in Tanzania and left un-finished, then eventually retouched in Vienna, Paris, Shanghai, Kunming, Dali or Vientiane. 20 years later I searched my Tanzanian files and rediscovered unfinished tracks which are being now refreshed on this new record. Back to the early days of the XXI century, when I lost my health trying to survive with the Hadzas, the last bushmen in northern Tanzania. In 1999 James Stephenson from NYC invited me to join his Hadzas friends. I would leave the bush to rest in a place with enough food and electricity and start to edit, loop and work on the original recordings, to trans-form them into organic abstract compositions, the only instrument I had recorded a lot with the Hadzas was the malimba and I bought different malimbas in Arusha to take back with me to Europe, I used either the original recordings or me playing malimbas on some tracks and applied some electronic treatment to it, at that time I used Roland synths for some tracks. The original recordings are related to scenes at night by the fire with the Hadzas, but also three different types of celebrations, 'Epeme Men' was recorded on a moonless night with men and women singing and dancing in complete darkness in Mangola, an Hadza camp. 'Irawk Drum Under the Rain' was recorded during daytime at a Multi ethnic gathering at the Franciscan Spanish catholic mission with a crowd dancing and singing under heavy rain while an IRAWK large (and wet) drum was being played, Northern Tanzania. 'Makonde Island' was recorded in southern Tanzania at the border with Mozambique and is a pure scene of trance taking place on an island where the Makonde fishermen off the coast of Mtwara, get wild, hitting plastic containers for the sound, drunk and stoned men and women are hysterically jumping and falling on each other, ending up with a few wounded. Once again, I'm responsible for this act of multicultural sabotage, but don't forget that you can always listen to the original recordings on the Kink Gong recs collection." --Laurent Jeanneau, Berlin 2023.
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CREP 097LP
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Sophomore album from Tenerife based trio, Lagoss (Gonçalo F. Cardoso, Mladen Kurajica, and Daniel García). Moving away from their megamix vignette based first volume (CREP 078LP, 2020), the trio now experiments with a more song-based approach whilst still keeping their trademark jam infused Tropicália and electronic freak-outs with an offering to their 1970s sci-fi masters -- enter the lift to the stars. First proposed by Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and taken to mystical literary heights by Arthur C. Clark in his 1979 book Fountains of Paradise, the concept of a space lift takes a spiritual turn here, with Lagoss chronicling its construction, right here and there on a near future version of their Island of Tenerife, in the Canary Archipelago. The album moves freely through ideas and moods akin to the world imagined by Arthur C. Clarke. It conveys a new story by sonically imagining future civilizations in a faux ethnographical exercise whilst exploring current ideas of technology, religion and alternative history by creating its own particular insular sound world. The album counts with the participation of dear friends such as a synth solo by Spencer Clark (Monopoly Child Star Searchers, et al.) and a punchy, full-blown remix by Muqata'a. Altogether creating a unique collection of eerie musical moments made of sub-tropical moods and cyber exotica jams from a band that keeps growing and evolving into their very own personal sound. Enter Tenerife in the late 21st century, meet the Aquachachos and Guayechi, and ascend. All music by Lagoss. Artwork by Evan Crankshaw. Mastered by Rashad Becker. One-off vinyl edition of 500 with printed inner sleeve.
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CREP 096LP
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Introducing Marc Codsi's new Arabic-infused synth-oriented album, Songs from the Aftermath. Lebanese musician and composer Marc Codsi has released numerous albums with various projects such as Scrambled Eggs, Lumi, Zalfa and many others whilst maintaining a very active career as a solo artist and film composer. Songs from the Aftermath is his fifth album and presented as a natural continuation to his 2019 opus work, A New World (Annihaya Records). Codsi continues his personal exploration of Arabic music codes, mainly investigating quarter tones scales in a fully electronic environment in order to create new harmonies and textures that still convey a feeling of familiarity whilst keeping a certain aura of strangeness and mystery. The album was recorded between during 2021 and 2022 and the music eventually comes as a very personal quest for transcendence. A sort of speculative answer to the world's ongoing absurdity and what seems to be an incessant array of conflicts, disasters and tragedies. From these dark alleys may we still arise to proclaim a sense of beauty, poetry and elevation. All tracks recorded and mixed by Marc Codsi, Paris 2021-2022. Mastered and cut by Anne Taegert, Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Artwork by Studio Safar Manufactured in Germany.
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CREP 095LP
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By now a regular and esteemed presence among the Discrepant sprawling household via releases with projects such as Alförjs or Jibóia, Mestre André "resurrects" his O Morto alias (bad pun somewhat intended) after 2016 The Forest, The People And The Spirits. With a diaristic approach where field recordings function as remnants of his surrounding reality and subsequent memories to be processed and recontextualized into an expressionist whole, O Morto expands that previous Discrepant release sonic palette unto uncharted cartographies. Based on a number of field recordings taken during a life-changing trip to Morocco that felt like a fever dream, Dans la Gorge d'un Monstre reenacts that hazy and hallucinatory mind frame through five tracks where no vivid recollection persists, tainted by the extrasensory feeling of not being quite there. A sonic fiction that goes from the processed cymbals and pummeling drums of "The Gorge" with Andrés's mates in Jibóia, through Moroccan Gimbri player Ayoub El Ayady and Khalid Boulhaman's rattling Krakebs on "Lila" and the slowed down Eccojams vibes of "Out of the Atlas" to the dreamy aquatic soundscapes and arpeggios of the appropriately titled "Princesas Batráquio". Comprising the whole of the B side, "A Desert of Rain" is a slow evolving wonder where gong-like tones drift beneath scrambled transmissions of unknown origin, eventually giving way to synapse inducing drone motifs and scraps of realities col-lapsing among themselves -- fire into water, a jetstream into steps, maybe none of this. Along with the LP, the release comes with a companion piece tape titled "Iffrits Habitent", a more impressionistic and unadulterated account of the same travel that could well be this side of the mirror. Then again, maybe he never made it from the other side. Who's to know?
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CREP 090LP
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Anthology introducing the first of a series of albums based on the concept of Aquapelago. "Since the earliest days of the planet there has been a rhythm of tides that creates coastal interzones where humans have foraged and pursued various livelihoods. Developing boats to fish from and technologies that enabled them to immerse themselves deep underwater, the aquatic realm has been one explored, experienced and imagined in various ways. In an effort to express the vitality and richness of this environment I coined the term aquapelago in 2012. The wordplay was deliberate. The neologism was designed to distinguish the liquid inbetweenness of this space from the dry, scattered, lands of archipelagos. The concept of the aquapelago coalesced around themes taken from various places . . .This compilation album takes the concept of the aquapelago into new depths and breaches it on fresh shores. The tracks are soaked with the aquatic. Bassy sonorities boom as if heard deep underwater. Bubbly textures breach the surface, water drips and seabirds soar high above waves. Sugai Kei samples fragments of text concerning the Ningen, a fantastic humanoid/whale that reflects the 'aquapelagic imaginary' of modern Japan and its preoccupation with industrial whaling. Andrew Pekler continues the orientation of his Phantom Islands project -- a sonic atlas of imaginary places -- with a soundscape as if heard by a swimmer just offshore, mixing sounds of the island and the sea together. Mike Cooper's sonic reflection on Hong Kong's Lamma Island is similar, combining the island's ubiquitous barking dogs with the slurp of waves on rocky shores, conjuring a languorous time before Chinese crackdowns on the territory. Taking another tack, the Dead Mauriacs gleefully water-ski through collage of tropical island exoticisms, replete with glitchy orientalism, while Babau combines skittering idiophone melodies with resonant glissandi. Vica Pacheco moves between dense and airy sounds, as if crossing between surf lines and the space above. Yannkick Dauby's track is also imbued with in-betweenness, evoking ambient sounds heard through a ship's hull. Sculpture's 'Froth Surfer' realizes its title, with bubbling sounds and rhythms that evoke Hawaiian surfing filtered through layers of time and distance. Reminding us of the shore necessary for aquapelagic spaces, Franceso Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage's composition anchors the album, centred around shaken rhythms and resonant ringing tones and drones..." --Philip Hayward, December 2021
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CREP 087LP
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Somewhere in the middle of the first track, "Torres e Baldios", there's a sudden change of pace with percussion rhythms interfering with the trance-like sound of the first six minutes. It sounds like steps, people running away on a corridor bashing their feet. It dazzles you because of how unexpected it is, how unpredictable those sounds sound like and, most of all, how it makes perfect sense. It is a monstrous piece. And the beginning of a new age for Ondness, in the same year he defied his Serpente moniker to create an absolute classic, Dias da Aranha (SOUK 009LP). What makes Oeste A.D. so remarkable is the intangible idea of nostalgia. "Aqua Matrix Alternative Nation" recreates with a slowed down mentality the theme of one of the main events of the Expo 98 in Lisbon. It's nowhere similar to the original, what it does is to mess around with the global ideas that were such a big part of that event. The Portuguese musicians that were invited to collaborate with Expo 98 were mesmerized by the ideas of union and globalization, creating overpriced music that sounds like shit today. "Aqua Matrix Alternative Nation" messes around with that vibe in a positive way. Think Mark Leckey playing around with his rave memories. Same thing, but in Portugal we had Expo 98. Jokes aside, the B side is more futuristic with "Torres e Baldios II" and "Endless Domingo", a nod to Endless Summer (EMEGO 135CD/LP), by Fennesz, and "Endless Happiness" (from Beaches And Canyons), by Black Dice, mashing up -- freely -- both covers and reminding of how great 2001-2002 was for experimental music. Both tracks are full of sci-fi drama and this sickness of the future that has been traveling with Ondness since its early days. But the approach here is somehow different. Before Oeste A.D. the Ondness sound was fragmented, sparse and intensively reflexive. There was this uncertainty to it that made the previously releases so good. But Oeste A.D. is full of clarity, the phrases are straightforward, and the music moves in one direction, continuously. Before, there were loads of unanswered questions. The only doubt is when will the world start to care and listen to Bruno's brilliant music. Now sounds like a good time. Mastered by Carlos Nascimento. Front cover by Evan Crankshaw. Back cover by Filipe Felizardo.
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CREP 091LP
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Discrepant presents Istanbul based audio/visual artist Koray Kantarcıoğlu's follow-up to his debut album Loopworks (CREP 059LP, 2018). Whilst the first volume used '60s and '70s Turkish records as source material, Loopworks 2 expands the sampling pool to local records as well as snippets from '70s TV and '80s new age and jazz tapes. This disparate material is mangled and glued together with Koray's very personal sampling techniques. This result becomes a dreamy, haunted and enigmatic collection of floating vignettes. Koray also enlists the help of local musicians such as Ekin Fil, who contributed to the album with haunting vocals and sound textures as well as Berke Can Özcan who adds drums and percussion into the haunted mix. The LP comes with a bonus CD entitled Loopworks 2 Extras, that could be another album itself, created from extra material that couldn't make it to the LP. Composed in 2020 and 2021.
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CREP 092LP
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By now counting more than four decades of constant activity, Pierre Bastien erected such a towering and influential body of work that any blurb attempt regarding his music could easily fall into redundancy. Not that his revolving soundworld, deeply personal and unique, has ever stalled into gimmick or self-mimicry, being Bastien the tireless explorer whose vision can never be complete, only continuously redefined in a process of discovery equally playful and challenging. So, completely in touch with Discrepant's ethos. Returning to the label after 2017 The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, the French musician, composer, and instrument builder, brings an array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies with the appropriately titled Sonic Folkways. Resorting to different types of horns, prepared trumpet, an army of percussion, from gongs and tambourine to castanets and maracas, violin and too many others to mention here, Bastien weaves together a highly textured and hypnotic mosaic that projects an exotica beamed from scraps of the future. "Aha!" in the same interstellar wavelength as Sun Ra's cosmic tones, "Moor's Room" almost orchestral tapestry of small percussion and insects or the non-western strings and tunings salvaged from ancient alien ceremonies on "Pan's Nap". In an era where so much ink has been shed about world building in experimental music, Bastien can actually claim that to himself. The otherworld is right here, indeed. Artwork collage by Evan Crankshaw. Mastered by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering.
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LP
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CREP 088LP
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Multi-groove single-sided LP. Parallel Traces Of The Jewel Voice by dj sniff is a project that takes inspiration from historical narratives and personal memories constructed around The Jewel Voice Broadcast (Gyokuon Hoso) that took place on August 15th, 1945. Contrary to common belief, Emperor Hirohito did not speak live on air to announce the surrender of Japan on this day. Instead, two lathe-cut discs with his recorded voice were skillfully mixed and played by NHK engineer Shizuto Haruna. Haruna's proto-DJ/turntablist performance was heard not only in Japan but also throughout the colonized territories in Asia, marking the end of World War II and Japanese rule. Interested in these aspects which often have been overlooked within the Japanese narratives of this historical event, dj sniff conducted research in both Taiwan and Japan. Over the course of three years, he collected various materials that include; interviews and field recordings, audio samples extracted from phonograph discs and recordings sessions with improvising musicians, and a re-reading of the Imperial Rescript on Surrender in Chinese. These were used to compose two compositions that are paired differently depending on their distribution format. The vinyl release is a multi-sided disc with two parallel grooves cut on one side, which in effect plays a different composition depending on where the stylus is cued. The other side has no audio but features two silkscreened lines that refer to how Haruna played the original lathe-cut discs. Additionally, an extensive text written by dj sniff accompanies this release. Sniff uncovers technical details of the recording and broadcasting of the emperor's voice that took place over 75 years ago. He also reflects on his encounters with the elderly community in Taiwan who spoke fluent Japanese and shared their personal stories after listening together to records from their childhood.
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CREP 089LP
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Third time's a charm. Or a chant in this case. Antologia De Música Atípica Portuguesa is back. Following two sold-out volumes, the unplanned trilogy comes to a close with chants and hymns whilst continuing to merge music genres and presenting them as a world building concept. If the first two volumes were dedicated to work (O Trabalho (CREP 035LP)) and regions (Regiões), it only made sense to close the trilogy with ceremonial music, connecting the real -- each musicians' creation -- with a fantasied celebration of Portuguese folk, traditions, and ghost methods within these unusual anthems. If you've listened to Niagara before, you probably felt this whole ceremonial thing going on. A perfect opener then, for this volume with Niagara's deep dive into proto religious-ambient music with "Paulo, Apolo e Pedro". It sets the tone for the next 35-minutes of ethereal like songs. Either you listen to musicians working within their natural habitat (João Pais Filipe or Filipe Felizardo) or feel them exploring new areas in their realm (Niagara, Joana Guerra or Serpente), this third volume manages to combine eight of the best underrated visionaries working in current day Portugal. In the past, Antologia da Música Atípica Portuguesa created an imaginary folktale where current day creations could live with the idea of archive or fake-folk. This volume forgets the world building and actually lives in it. Because this is the real Portugal. This is Portugal's folk. These are Portugal's chants. Embrace the otherworldly. Also features Jibóia, Folclore Impressionista, and Bruno Ardo.
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CREP 086LP
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In what seems like some sort of cosmic alignment bound to happen, the ever prolific and somewhat elusive Niagara make their way into the Discrepant catalog with 1807. Compiling tracks recorded between 2014 and 2018 that appeared scattered among very limited and long out-of-print self-released CDRs, the record feels as much out of time as deeply resonant with these times with no dancefloors. Stripping away most of the beat-based approach of early Príncipe releases and Ascender EPs, these 17 vignettes presented in the classic dance maxi 12" format dabble with escapism in a manner that projects them as potential DJ tools for lockdown. Deeply idiosyncratic, the trio from Loures shows an internal coherence that while not easy to grasp given their mutating creative impulses, weaves each different path into a sonic fiction all their own. Cobbled together from countless hours of jamming on warm spectral synths, field recordings, otherworldly textures or devious drum machines 1807 paints a vivid and dreamlike escape route that goes from the hypnotic arpeggios and rarefied synths of "Esc8" through the glowing tones and fragmented melodies of "Egyptiu" and into the malfunctioning swirl of the stark "Esc 10" or the polluted 4/4 thump and funky guitar line of "Mapas". Equally disruptive and inviting. All tracks composed by Niagara between 2014-2018.
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CREP 081LP
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Contemporary and historical Porest recordings channeled from behind the somnambulistic event horizon. The now sound... The bleak oblique. The minimal and the maximal. Filmic chamber drones, meditative radio massage and forged spiritual violence bury pop ephemera into the swirling murk of de facto instrumental nihilism and orchestral context-free drama. Side A: A harmful journey into sickness and despair. You get sick and die. Side B: You are healed. You stand erect and live forever. Layered field and radio recordings back electro-acoustic experiments via electric saz, strings, balypso, reeds, and synths. Big drones, small ensembles and mood-anthems recorded by Porest and friends between 1995 and 2020 in West Oakland, Germany, Sumatra, Syria, Hanoi and London.
Personnel: Mark Gergis - bağlama drama, balypso, bass, breath density, edits, electronics, gravel, horn, hot volume, foley, glass, Moroccan fiddle, site-recordings, organ, percussion, pulse wash, radios, recorder, reverb, synthesizers, tapes; Jerry Blue - electric guitar ("No Terracotta Relief"); Heco Davis - clarinet ("Liminal Treason"), saxophone ("One Million Dollars"); Erik Gergis - washtub bass & brushes ("One Million Dollars"), synth ("(Terlok)"), accordion ("Liminal Treason"); Peter Valsamis - co-arrangement/production & percussion ("(Terlok)"); Jeremy Wilson - marimba ("One Million Dollars").
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LP + CD + 7"
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CREP 083S-LP
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Kamana is a multiformat release inspired by and channeling the culture and traditions of the Aeta, an indigenous group from the Zambales region in the Philippines. One of the oldest inhabitants of the region the Aetas are also some of the most fascinating and ancient nomadic and hunter gathering cultures. The release goes from the realms of the real to the imaginary, from transcription to syncretism, from concrete to abstract. An (un)real sonic exorcism filled with ancestral frequencies, haunted ghosts and other animistic spirits roaming the Pinatubo forests. The release features a series of materials released in different formats from the field recording digital only release, an LP and CD release to a special 7" vinyl featuring an interview with a bat hunter. Also includes download with additional material.
"Kamana is a long due homage to the Aeta community that hosted me a few years back, fascinated by the endurance of these people and their connection to their land, devastated by the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in 1991, they continued to go back to their ancestral lands surviving on basic agriculture and hunting bats and wild pigs. Living with them for weeks, I managed to capture some essential field recordings and sounds that form and compose the basis for this release, from the more reprocessed and interpreted LP release to the pure field recording documentation of the digital release. It is meant to be accessible to all and provide a window to the livelihoods of these unique communities. For this reason, this release serves as both an archival document and a syncretic one, trying to channel memories and feelings of living in these jungles whilst listening to their stories as well as witnessing their lifestyles." --Carlos Casas, 2021
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