The mysterious GC who signs under the pseudonym Xperi-Lab is a music producer from Canada who in 40 years has produced music in genres ranging from ambient, to downtempo, industrial or dance music. Xperi-Lab is a recently founded project and Connecting Dots is the debut album.
Words by Marco Guerra
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
Xperi-Lab is dedicated to sonic exploration and experimentalism. Field recordings, Moogs, Korg Kaossilator, and many effects are some of the elements used to create Connecting Dots. We can see this album as an expedition to the most hidden places of the human mind, with soundscapes that sometimes take us back to the inside of our biological mother's womb, others that pull us to obscure places, and in other cases, we imagine ourselves on an interplanetary journey to reach a new galaxy.
Right from the first few seconds of "Dark Shadows", the album's opening track, you get a sense of what lies ahead. A song that presents us with a sort of flickering drone/pad and derivative effects accompanied by a recorded sound that GC aka Xperi-Lab captured in his backyard and incorporated into this track. "Perpetual Factory" increases the dose of tension, with a splendid balance between a very sharp pad, a reverberated percussion rim and a bass drone that runs through the whole track.
On the song "A Night In The Forest" the sonic exploration continues, now with crickets recorded on Antigua island in the Caribbean that are joined by punctuated pads and an incredible sound design, playing with panning, delays and reverbs.
"Intermittent Lava Bubbles" reduces the density and suggests a more dreamy and colourful kind of landscape, but still producing psychotropic effects on our brains make no mistake.
"ADX-31" is a track that mirrors quite well the spectrum that Xperi-Labs intended to achieve with Connecting Dots. In this song, created with a Moog Concertmate MG-1 and a Kaossilator, the final result was obtained by tweaking parameters on the Kaossilator but without hearing the effects applied. A beautiful example of the creative freedom, without any limits or boundaries, that Xperi-Lab wanted to imprint on his debut.
"Reprocessed Processes" uses sounds similar to those already used in "Perpetual Factory" but where the tension gives way to a lighter, dreamy state of mind perhaps, as if we were stepping on another planet for the first time.
"The Spy" is possibly my favourite track. It reminds me of a sci-fi movie where humans are making contact with extraterrestrial beings for the first time. Of all the times I've heard "The Spy", Denis Villeneuve's film "Arrival" comes to mind. Creepy, in the best sense of the word!
And after two tracks with 9 and 8 minutes respectively, the following "Inverted Fibonacci Sequence" takes the role of interlude to give way to "Half Circle", the track that closes the album.
Connecting Dots is that kind of "punch in the face" album. A musical piece where the sound design, exploration and the search for new ways of making music are well in evidence.