/about/super dimension

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

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

education:

at the alexander hamilton high school academy of music, I further developed my 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 my junior year, I immediately enrolled. it was in that class that I would blend my experimental tinkerings with the dusty cabinets of forgotten vintage gear from the previous incarnation of the class. along with longtime friend and collaborator, milton carrillo, we eschewed the fancy macintosh-powered production studios with rackmount synths and effects, and state of the art cubase sequencers to instead create our 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, our daily jam sessions would go on to form the basis of our first record as the duo dr. science, dr. science presents…. In film classes, I created music video productions to accompany my beats.

higher education:

attending the california college of the arts in 1999, I moved to oakland, ca. initially to study film. I 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 my film assignments. working with a more sample-heavy style, I continued to indulge my passion for obscure vinyl and random thrift store finds to produce my 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 my sophomore and junior years, I delved deeper into music, producing several records under the cats on earth and evolving my style into more complex and eclectic realms, like the ambient qmulus aliases.

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 a shift in my 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 2006, i 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 my previously released solo projects, but harkened back to earlier guitar-based productions. In this period I also delved 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 (and MASS Redux).

2010-2014:

inspired by the nova satori project to pursue a more immediate, spontaneous way to produce electronic music, I stripped down both my musical style and setup to accommodate. I invested in more hardware equipment, building out my 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 the mass story, the album midnight mass was released in 2010, propelling my music into the worlds of house, techno, and lo-fi disco. simultaneously, I 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, I began developing several comic projects, bringing together my passion for storytelling and worldbuilding with my floundering illustration talents, continuing the unfinished after life project as well as beginning the adaptation of my short stories into the mass series.

2015-2019:

this period saw me dedicate much of my 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 my studio, a roland mc-303 groovebox, as a makeshift hardware sequencer and I 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.

2020-2024:

an era of renewal, the 2020s brought life back into long shuttered projects. after a 16 year hiatus, I was inspired to resurrect 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 my later work. low orbit the following year continued the trend, but in 2023, I set out to produce a second nova satori record. the result was 2024’s infrared echoes from the void, a sonic journey through space that brought a much heavier edge to the nova satori sound.

The MASS story began to undergo a drastic change during this period, becoming MASS Redux, with a reimagined graphic novel in production, as well as an extended universe of audio, video, text, etc. content that tell aspects of the story and flesh out the world across multiple mediums. As such, a number of yet-to-be released moto-SLAVE tracks were produced.

2025-present:

By 2025, I was enjoying releasing new music on my YouTube channel, but I was getting frustrated with the limitations of making mixes of my old tracks in Ableton Live, so I purchased a traktor s4mk3 and started a new journey into djing. what started as a way to present my older work in a new context evolved into an outlet for my love of old school jungle and drum & bass, and sent me down a rabbit hole of musical connection and influence that opened up a whole new understanding of myself, the music i listen to, and the music I make.

Work on Cats on Earth tracks continued, with Sacrifice being released in 2026 after two years of production. FOr that project, I focused on stripping back some of the experimentation for a more straightforward approach to the songwriting, which turned out to be a fairly serious exercise in restraint. Since then, cats productions have gotten more experimental again, with several new releases in the works. work on the nova satori project continued as well, integrating a more expansive, orchestral sound on the forthcoming a son of stars record. During this period I also picked up a few new pieces of gear - a behringer td-3 and a roland r6, which drove a revival of the com-s project and the release of dark moon tapes vol. 2 in 2026.

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