/about/super dimension

origin: 2012
history: super dimension is the online portal for the multi-disciplinary artist chris oldaker.

/about/chris oldaker

name: chris oldaker
alias(s): cats on earth, com-s, moto-slave, nova satori
origin: 1980; 34.02342024084672, -118.39684966191702

early life:

born and raised in los angeles, ca, chris oldaker began studying art, music, and performance at a young age. he developed an interest in music, film, drawing, and comics early on, which have driven much of his work since. in those early days, he was attending 32nd street visual & performing arts middle school, writing and drawing his own comics and characters, while playing in the instrumental alternative rock band roach with his friends, studying jazz guitar, and tinkering with his own experimental solo music projects on the side.

education:

at the alexander hamilton high school academy of music, he further developed his musical and multi-media education, studying music theory, drama, film/video production, and more. when the school reintroduced a long-shuttered electronic music elective in his junior year, chris immediately enrolled. it was in that class that he would blend his experimental tinkerings with the dusty cabinets of forgotten vintage gear from the previous incarnation of the class. along with longtime friend and collaborator, milton carillo, they eschewed the fancy macintosh-powered production studios with rackmount synths and effects, and state of the art cubase sequencers to instead create their own daisy-chained lo-fi live jam setups in the far corners of the classroom. driven by a salvaged linn drum ii, yamaha dx-7, oberheim matrix-6, and a brand new nord lead 2 virtual analog synth, their daily jam sessions would go on to form the basis of their first record as the duo dr. science, dr. science presents…. In film classes, he created music video productions to accompany his beats.

higher education:

attending the california college of the arts in 1999, chris moved to oakland, ca. initially to study film. he later shifted focus to major in drawing/painting, with a heavy additional emphasis on creative writing. in the school’s computer labs, the cats on earth project was born out the need to have a backing track for one of his film assignments. working with a more sample-heavy style, he continued to indulge his passion for obscure vinyl and random thrift store finds to produce his own brand of instrumental hip-hop epitomized by the debut release mama told me to pimp hard (and i won’t let her down). taking a few years off between his sophomore and junior years, he delved deeper into his music, producing several records under the cats on earth and qmulus aliases, evolving his style into more complex and eclectic realms.

2005-2009:

the 2005 full length release la fin triste and accompanying ep le debut heureux marked the conclusion of the cats on earth project, with the ensuing years seeing chris shift his attention to other projects. taking a break from the intricate electronic productions, nova satori was an instrumental post-rock project focusing on live instrumentation and celestial soundscapes. in 2008, he released a sun of sound, a record blending post rock, jazz, metal, and ambient into a sound that was a drastic departure from a majority of his previous solo projects. this period also saw chris delving more into fiction writing, including the classic sci-fi inspired comic after life (in collaboration with artist colin nitta) as well as a series of interconnected short stories in a near-future sci-fi universe that would later form the basis of the mass comic.

2010-2014:

inspired by the nova satori project to pursue a more immediate, spontaneous way to produce electronic music, this period saw chris stripping down both his musical style and setup to accommodate. He invested in more hardware equipment, building out his home studio with a roland jx-3p, roland jx-8p, yamaha dx-7, korg microkorg, and a roland mks-7 to drive a more hands-on approach. the first project to come out of this new setup was moto-slave, an analog-drenched retro-futuristic dance music persona blending electro, acid house, and disco funk. imagined as the soundtrack to his mass story, the album midnight mass was released in 2010, propelling his music into the worlds of house, techno, and lo-fi disco. simultaneously, he launched the gravity halo collective, a hybrid web label, music collective, and production blog that featured contributions from a variety of independent electronic music producers. in 2014, chris began developing several comic projects, bringing together his passion for storytelling and worldbuilding with his floundering illustration talents, continuing the unfinished after life project as well as beginning the adaptation of his short stories into the mass series.

2015-2019:

this period saw chris dedicate much of his creative energy to writing and comics, publishing several issues of after life and mass as well as a historical fantasy story the black lands and a noir/crime series paranoia. all was not silent on the musical front though, the com-s project leveraged the newest addition to his studio, a roland mc-303 groovebox, as a makeshift hardware sequencer and began to produce batches of all hardware “single-session” tracks, created and recorded all in standalone 1-3 hour sessions, recorded to video and released on the catsonearth youtube channel.

2020-present:

an era of renewal, the early 2020s brought life back into long shuttered projects. after a 16 year hiatus, chris resurrected the cats on earth alias in 2021 with machine learning, a record of 90s inspired drum n’ bass that integrated the complex beat chopping, sound manipulation, and synth melodies of classic cats on earth with the lo-fi analog electronics of his later work. low orbit the following year continued the trend, but in 2023, chris again returned to a forgotten project and set out to produce a second nova satori album. the result was 2024’s infrared echoes from the void, a sonic journey through space that brought a much heavier sound to the nova satori sound.

access: news logs