On a recent Friday in Paris, on what felt like the first night of spring, Sidney Gerard and Souleymane Said sat on the top deck of Concrete, the boat-turned-club on the Seine. From below deck came the ominous low-end rumble of Max Loderbauer and Tobias Freund sound-checking their NSI live set. Gerard and Said's Latency label was holding one of its occasional parties at Concrete, where the booking clout of one of Paris's leading clubs meets the curation of one of its finest labels. Alongside NSI, Peter Van Hoesen and Yves De Mey performed a Sendai Sound System hybrid live/DJ set, while Japanese producer Ena made a rare European DJ appearance.

Two weeks later, Latency held another event in Paris, this time with Laurel Halo and the PAN artist Konrad Sprenger at the Eglise Saint-Merri, an atmospheric church near the Pompidou Centre. These two events straddled the exuberant energy of a club night and the solemn atmosphere of an experimental concert. Together, they sum up what Latency is all about.

Gerard and Said started Latency in 2013. The label began releasing records from artists on the outskirts of house and techno, such as Innerspace Halflife, Joey Anderson and Even Tuell. As it's grown, Latency has embraced more experimental sounds. Gerard said he's drawn to "in-between music that's really experimental but can also be played in clubs."

"We don't have a vast range of music we release," Gerard said. "It all has a really strong, late-night, B2 feeling. I think Paul David [Rollmann, AKA Even Tuell] said this a long time ago. We were always into the B-sides and the low-key, atmospheric tracks on the records we were buying."

The music on Latency is striking, but its artistic direction helps set it apart. The first ten records came in silk-screen printed black-and-white sleeves—tactile, textured prints of ambiguous photographs. Post Industrial, the Innerspace Halflife release, used a particular solvent-based ink, which meant the sleeve had a strong chemical aroma months after it came out. Gerard insisted that his copy still smells.

Latency's artwork conveys a certain gravity that the average club 12-inch lacks. The evolution of the label has been measured and coherent, but still it's hard to predict which way it will turn next. Each release has a sense of occasion, as well as a feeling that each artist is presenting their vision without compromise. The lineups for the Latency events, and even the artistic direction on the Latency website, are an extension of an ethos where attention to detail is key.

"You should see my apartment," laughed Gerard over dinner before the Concrete show. "Before I leave in the morning I have to make sure everything is in the right place, that the whole scene looks perfect."

The two freely admitted to their obsessive tendencies. "It's a kind of trauma," said Said. "The way we organise and name our folders on the laptop, or the way we write descriptions on Instagram. Placing a simple dot is subject to discussion. It's really fucked up."

After the label's tenth release—2017's The Pestle by Burnt Friedman—the label dropped the black-and-white sleeves and embraced a bolder, more colourful direction. "We thought it was time to get away from this black-and-white aesthetic," said Gerard, "because we wanted to surprise ourselves and start a new chapter." The three releases in this new era have been proudly experimental, from Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe's modular meditations to Bellows' instrument-led ruminations and an album of Yves De Mey's intricate beat deconstructions.

The sleeves for these three records were equally diverse. There was Misha Hollenbach's bold detail shot of a bronze statue (for Lowe), a painting by Maude Maris (for Bellows) and a sculpture by Jean-Marie Appriou (for De Mey). "Misha Hollenbach was the first artist who did something especially for the record," Said told me. "Maude Maris and Jean-Marie Appriou's pieces already existed, so we simply asked permission to use them as covers. Although it's not a commission, finding and deciding on a particular artwork is a process of hours and hours, especially for Sidney."

Where the black-and-white screen-printing created coherency on the first ten sleeves, the new palette reflects the unpredictable but heavily considered ebb and flow of the musical choices they make. "I think it's very important to renew yourself," said Said, "and the new chapter was fitting our lifestyles."

Their student days were behind them, and Said had moved to Copenhagen to work as Head of Design for famed Danish art collective Superflex. "It was bringing the idea behind the label further," said Said. "Before we were at school, collaborating with friends. Now we are more established, we have more contacts, so we can collaborate with established visual artists, and that was always the goal."

As you might expect, Gerard and Said both have a grounding in the visual arts. They met at the esteemed Parisian art and design school EnsAD. While holding a student meeting, Said asked the assembled crowd if anyone was a DJ, and Gerard was the only person to raise his hand. "There was a good energy that clicked and we just stayed in touch," recalled Said.

After Said moved to Copenhagen, the pair started organising small parties together in Paris, and soon the idea of starting a label emerged. Originally conceived around a collective of friends, it quickly became clear Gerard and Said were more serious about the project than the rest, so they forged ahead on their own. They signed the first Latency release after Said played at a party with Innerspace Halflife's Hakim Murphy. As is often the case, the label's beginnings were not so much a grand plan as a successful experiment.

For the second release they turned to Joey Anderson, the New Jersey producer whose strain of otherworldly techno was just coming to light on Deconstruct, Inimeg and UntilMyHeartStops. Two of the three tracks on the release had been sitting on Anderson's SoundCloud page with little more than 100 plays. "Press Play" in particular became a calling card for the label, but even at this early stage they were conscious to avoid limiting the label to a particular sound.

"Our tastes were evolving so rapidly," said Gerard. "So just after Innerspace Halflife from Chicago to a more New York, low-key atmosphere like Joey Anderson, a few months later we were really into the German, early 2000s sound like Workshop and Playhouse." The third record, Even Tuell's Longing Way, was a nod to Gerard and Said's shared love of Workshop Records. Tuell's sound shared a similar spirit with Joey Anderson, achieving the narrative consistency that has come to define Latency. At the time the pair were immersed in DJing and club music, and they said that the ongoing direction of the label is thought out like a DJ set.

Gerard and Said's position at EnsAD gave them the opportunity to develop Latency's distinctive visual identity. EnsAD's technical director supported the pair's project, giving them access to the school's screen-printing workshop, cited as one of the best facilities in Paris.

"We were trying to find a strong image that fits the music and would look good silk-screened, which is not the case for all visuals," explained Said. "You can take an amazing picture but when you silk-screen it, it could look like shit, and you can take an average picture but silk-screened it looks amazing."

"In the beginning we were carefully trying to do the most perfect black-and-white silk screen possible," said Gerard. "But soon we had less time, and we were doing it faster and faster. And it was much more special when we were making mistakes."

After leaving EnsAD, Gerard and Said took a more DIY approach. With three releases pressed up and ready for printing, Gerard flew to Copenhagen so they could make the covers, only to have their planned workshop space fall through. Instead, they had to do some 1500 sleeves on the floor of Said's bedroom. Halfway through printing the batch of sleeves for Kane Ikin's Basalt Crush EP, the tense, specially treated fabric on the press tore apart. "Half of the back covers of the Kane Ikin have a big line through them," said Gerard, "but it's one of the most beautiful ones we've done."

By 2016 Latency was taking a more experimental direction, but a real turning point came two years earlier, with the release of crooked rhythmic explorations and drone-led atmospheres from Mura Oka, a collaboration between Gerard and Louis Vial, AKA Eszaid, who runs the Collapsing Market label. "When we started the label we were really into DJing and I guess that's why those first three releases are club-oriented," said Said. "But we realised it didn't have to be exclusively for clubs. The Mura Oka record is this first realisation, and that's why you have beats and you have something else. I would say it's almost the beginning of the label."

Latency's creative success comes in no small part from the certainty with which Gerard and Said operate. From their education in visual arts to years spent digging for music, they've amassed the tools to deliver consistently excellent records, and the catalogue is testament to that.

"We rarely disagree," Said told me. "Show us 100 artworks, and if you ask me before asking Sidney, I'm going to choose the third one and he's going to choose the third one. Personally, that connection keeps me motivated."

There was only one point I discovered that divides them. I said that, up until now, Latency has never released music from an artist more than once. "This is a big topic!" Gerard laughed. "It's not that I don't want to. It just feels more natural to explore new horizons. But this is maybe one of the few topics we disagree on. Again, it's a trauma—the same when I'm doing a podcast or a mix, I don't want the same artist twice. A big difference between us and a lot of labels though is that we are not building a family of artists."

Even if they're more focused on experimental music now, Latency retains a connection with the club. The night at Concrete is a perfect example of the unconventional nature at the heart of the label, providing a more challenging lineup than you'd ordinarily find in a nightclub. It was heartening, if a little strange, to see kids throwing shapes to the abstract analogue synth shapes of NSI's live performance. They were clearly waiting for a sturdy kick drum to set off their Friday night, but they were embracing the surreal situation all the same.

It was assumed that Van Hoesen and De Mey's Sendai Sound System set would plunge into the depths of meditative techno, but instead we were treated to a barrage of peak-time rave. Classics across the spectrum, from new beat, industrial and new wave through to acid, techno and beyond flew in and out of the mix, bolstered by live 909 tweaking and some added synth squeaks. The fiery direction took everyone by surprise. It was down to Lullabies For Insomniacs founder Izabel to provide the more esoteric delights upstairs on the Woodfloor.

Gerard and Said flirted with broken rhythms, but predominantly their early morning slot was a techno workout almost at odds with their label. Ena struck the perfect balance that sums up Latency, playing noticeably tougher than his recent releases, but still coming up with a strange rhythmic language away from the conventional techno template.

"There are a lot of artists we personally want to bring to Paris," said Gerard. "We feel there is something missing in Paris. There is a big distance between the contemporary experimental scene and the techno scene. It's really strange because I still like early Steve Stoll records as much as I like the last Aine O'Dwyer album."

"And that's Latency," Said pointed out. "Like we said before, the label is like a DJ mix. You can play a Steve Stoll record in a podcast, you have an Aine O'Dwyer track and then you have a Yves De Mey track and... yeah. There's no rules."

Label of the month mix

Sidney & Suleiman show us the "late-night, B2 feeling" that defines their label.

Tracklist /
Bellows - Untitled (LTNC012)
Burnt Friedman - 2011 Monkhide (LTNC010)
Andrea Belfi - Cera Persa 1 (LTNC008)
Yves De Mey - Mika (LTNC013)
Madteo - Discomfort Zone (LTNC005)
ENA - Tendency (LTNC009)
Kane Ikin - Grid (LTNC007)
Bellows - Untitled (LTNC012)
Yves De Mey - Bleak Comfort (LTNC013)
Burnt Friedman - 1999 Nerfs D’acier (LTNC010)
Bellows - Untitled (LTNC012)
Mura Oka - Untitled (LTNC004)
Nuel - Aphrobite (LTNC006)
Kane Ikin - Autophasic (LTNC007)
Madteo - Irreconcilable Indifferences (LTNC005)
ENA - Waft (LTNC009)
Mura Oka - Untitled (LTNC004)
Kane Ikin - Echoic (LTNC007)
Andrea Belfi - Cera Persa 2 (LTNC007)
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Heart Of Sogguth (LTNC011)
Yves De Mey - Gruen (LTNC013)
Burnt Friedman - 2010 The Pestle (LTNC010)
****** - ******* (Forthcoming LTNC014)