BIO

fraqtured : sound

in the quiet and cold winter of 1999, c.norris spent a majority of his time wandering around the lower and outerlaying comercial and industrial districts... collecting scrap metal, odd hunks of steel, loose tools and fixtures in the smaller hours of the morning... amongst some of his most favorite activities were writing, smoking cigarettes, and listening to his headphones sitting in odd vantage points across the city, ontop of buildings, hanging from fire escapes far above the city floor, and along the waterfront of the shipping ports and railyards. "i worked in a place where there was a high traffic of very intriguing people and i often had invitations extended to me for local events going on around town... performance art showcases, live music events, and social/political civil issues". he had spent a length of time volounteering with an organization called the Liberation Collective, even travelling with them across the US holding and attending humane education workshops, protests of breeding practices, vivisection, for labor and worker rights, fair trade and participating in active civil disobediance and active non passive protest. "i had a very clear idea of how i felt i should live my life, by whatever means i saw to be the most productive and the most meaningful", he found the apathy, and self serving attitudes that were common place amongst the majority of all whom he encountered within the working world and sadly amongst the sub cultures of Portlands political, and art communities to be revolting... he slowly removed himself from the things that he saw in his life as counter productive, negative, or distracting, and focused his attentions on other ways in which to create change, to create art, an outlet, the change of consciousness or thought. thus was born the idea of fraqtured : sound.

at a point in his life when he felt many things had failed or abandoned him, he found solis in the process of electronic composition, the creation of a symphony of noise... a broken audio. it was in Southeast portland that he took his first steps towards forming the single member project of fraqtured : sound and ordered his first synthesizer, the futureretro 777 he sat in his room untill the early hours of the morning twisting knobs recording with a hand held tape recorder he had purchased to record samples around the city. he would often travel out for his favorite at the time, chai tea, to a now defunct 24 hour coffe shop on the corner of 39th and hawthorne. he would sit and write, listen to music, occasionally talking with a few others in the shope, sharing ideas and stories. "at that point in my life, it was very hard for me to let people in, to trust them with my thoughts and my emotions" with time a majority of these people faded from his life, through either choice, or otherwise... but he kept their ideas within him, the shared thoughts and secrets that formed and transformed their ties to one another, and put them into his fingertips as he spent hours at night with his equipment, looking into the nights empty streets with a camera, and putting his pen to paper. "i worked tirelessly to save money for more equipment, in a job that i could barely stand, though afforded me certain opportunities. i adopted chanting at work, repeating words and sentences over and over and over again, assuring myself it was for the best, that this waste of my day would provide me with the means to create" and every night he would treat himself to a trip to the record store to buy a new CD for himself, exploring many different projects with whom he felt he had a similiar view or idea. he would spend his days off either loitering in the keyboard room at portland musics old location on N.W. 5th, or at home working on compositions. he then purchased his 2nd synth the Roland JP8000, something surely most people are well aquianted with.

it was at this time that he had moved back into the 14 house, on NW 3rd in old town, he moved into the same room, full of memories, hurt, joy, isolation, and opportunity. there was an art gallery below named Martial Art, begun a few years back by the very artist who put the ink in chris's skin. he had met the new leaseholders of the gallery at a first thursday prior to moving in again. " i was walking around with this mic running into my handheld recorder, and people were kind of taken back by it, some excited, some paranoid... i met several people who found it very interesting" one of those people was a fellow by the name of Alix."he asked me if i wanted to record the sound of T.V's being smashed, to which i replied with excitement, yes. he took me into the basement and showed me two "TV guilotenes" he had made from scratch, loaded the TV's into them, and explained the basic idea of how they worked... they were wooden frames with these big bullets(think the size of your chest, slightly smaller) hanging from wire on pulleys, i set up the mic, and we tripped the guilotenes... the rest is somewhat history"...

over time Alix and chris began working on a live showcase of industrial arts, and Industrial music. Alix did welding/grinding, blascksmithing and casting/pouring while chris manipulated his equipment in sequence to Alix's work, Jenny (Alix's girlfriend) wandered around hitting sheets of steel with hammers, breaking glass, singing out loud, and engaging the audience. the area in which they played was an unfinished basement, with low exposed ceiling, and two drain vent/grates at the end of the room in a building built in 1890. eventually being dubbed Industriot, the shows began to incorporate a few more synths, more and more metal percussive instruments, more interactive metal work, and live vocals sang through a gasmask with a mic where the canister would have gone. a very close friend of chris's named Kristin came to play bass and guitars. "he would string a series of processors together, and sample over delays and loops, and with the same kind of movement an epileptic would experience during a seizure, he would flail and swing, bringing some of the most bizzare and at the same time beautiful sounds out of his instruments" thus began a long tradition of others coming to join and bring instruments, some homemade, some dug out of dumpsters, some found at the local thrift store bins. "Alix began developement of several new additions to the live effects, a working electric chair (from the "capital punishment" first thursday) which doubled as my keyboard stand, a crossbow that shot bolts into the TV's and, an endless supply of broken TV's running static or blinking oddly as they died slowly" the TV's they found just got donated in bulk by people whom had been to shows, and liked the way in which they kind of fell appart each and every time. chris started playing in a gasmask and old millitary rubber poncho he had painted black. near the 4th of july one year he secured an array of fireworks for a DIY pyroteknics show since his idea of a gasoline fueled flame thrower burried in the ground was not met with nearly as much excitement by the others as he would have hoped, he spent some of the shows lighting off fireworks, smashing and kicking out TV's, and making liberal use of the multiple grinders and piles of scrap steel making giant nails. Industriot had become much more than it was in it's inception, video and audio recordings survive to this day, giving a vivd reminder of the many examples of live electrocution, branding, blood, smoke, sparks, and in one experiment with casting in an insulated mold that melted... a cyanide gas outbreak. look in the right places, or ask the right people and you can find some of this material for yourself.

PROGRAM ONE

chris in addition to his work with Industriot soon began on his first collection of composed works entitled "program one" the album included 2 vocal pieces and several experimental synth and percussive tracks. there was a limited run on the availability of the record as it was entirely self released. every single track in each song was recorded in one take, there was no punch in or selective editing.

the followinhg equipment was used in production, recording, composition, mastering, treatment and editing.

Recording : Tascam MK424 casette 4 track

Synth : Roland JP8000 / Futureretro 777

Effects : Alesis Midiverb2 / Mackie 808S power mixer / a random assortment of guitar effect pedals...

percusion : Alesis DM5 / yamaha Drumpad w/midi I/O / assorted scrap metal, pipes

mic : Sure "elvis"

CREARE

Industriot came to an untimely end as the space was outbid on the lease that a theme bar now owns. Chris moved from Portland to Beaverton to live in a somewhat more private setting where he began working with a digital recording medium in the winter of 2000. it was also at this time he began working with computer based music production software. He set to work to compose the 2nd collection of works entitled "creare" the album though would not be finished untill roughly 2 years later.

as the studio grew, so did the equipment used in the recording process this resulted in a quality that can be heard within the recordings. this record took more of direct aproach to the structure of composition, there were more vocals on the record and multiple vocal tracks, experimentation with stereo fields, room enough to double track certain instruments, and minor experimentation with sampling. there were 11 tracks recorded in total, though only 9 appeared on the record. every single track in each song was recorded in one take, there was no punch in or selective editing.

the followinhg equipment was used in production, recording, composition, mastering, treatment and editing.

Recording : Korg D16

Synth : Roland JP8000

Effects : Alesis Midiverb2 / Alesis compressor / Big Bottom sonic maximizer(briefly) / Zoom distortion/overdrive processor

Percusion & Software : Fruity loops pro

mic : Sure SM58, Audia Technica

Computer : self built PC with an AMD athlon KG7 raid motherboard

950 mhz CPU with 1 GIG of ram

a Soundblaster Audigy platinum soundcard with bay & card I/O

between the release of creare and architecture, chris moved back to portland for roughly 6 months, this time was spent mostly working on non musical aspects of fraqtured sound. an updated web page, web and radio promotion, as well as remastering and remixing a few tracks off of creare. but as a need once again developed to live in a more private setting he relocated back to Beaverton where he would begin work on new recordings, and organizing a few live events. it was during this time the Soundclick.com page went live, since it's start on the 2nd of September 2004, there have been over 20,000 downloads, visitors from Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Poland, Latvia, France, French Polynesia, the United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal,Israel, Romania, Luxembourg, Austria, Turkey, Panama, Croatia, Slovakia, Chile, Japan, China, Australia, Malaysia, Norway, Morocco, Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela, the United Arab Emirates, Peru, India, Estonia, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Taiwan, Argentina, Spain, Canada and the US, a consistent listing on the soundclick Industrial top 20, Ambient, and Experimental charts, with a high chart position of 12th, a rotation on the featured band hi-fi streaming link on the Industrial charts page, and on 22 different Soundclick radio stations, as well as a number of internet radio programs and stations.

ARCHITECTURE

after a slight break from composition chris, again living in Beaverton, began work on the 3rd and most current album in april of 2004. "architecture" which will total anywhere from 12-14 tracks is by far the most layered and engaging of his works to date. drawing from a vast time and area of inspiration, and a few new tools with which to work, architecture explores many different styles of song structure, arrangement, and composition. from dirty pounding industrial with hints of IDM, hypnotic instrumental pieces, to ambient experimentalism, there was great care to incorporate many different emotions and themes within the tracks contained on the disc. the final result is a well balanced mix of vocal work, haunting and beuatifully placed string, synth, and percussive elements. this record is going into advanced production sometime after the end of the year, release details are still forthcoming, but the record will be available for purchase December 2004, and will run a limited edition of 100 numbered copies with a special printing on the face and a sticker exclusive to the run of that print.

the followinhg equipment was used in production, recording, composition, mastering, treatment and editing.

Recording : Korg D16 / Nuendo 2

Mastering & Treatment : Nuendo 2

Synth : Roland JP8000 / Reason 2.5 / Maudio Ozone USB interface and controller

Effects : Alesis Midiverb 2 / Alesis compressor / Zoom distortion/overdrive processor / Reason 2.5 / Nuendo 2

Percusion & Software : Reason 2.5 / Nuendo / Hammerhead

Monitors : Sony MDR 7506

mic : Audia technica / MXL 2001(select tracks only)

Computer : self built PC with an AMD athlon KG7 raid motherboard

950 mhz CPU with 1 gig of ram

a Soundblaster Audigy platinum soundcard with bay & card I/O

Laptop : Compaq Presario with 2.4 gig P4 with 512 MB ram (running Reason 2.5, Nuendo, and Hammerhead)

TO COME...

i am currently preparing to move into more permanent a living situation in Hillsboro. there i will be setting up a home studio in a bedroom of the house where i will began work on the 4th album. i am going to be submitting Demos to a few different labels around the US and Europe, eventually, "architecture" will be avail on the internation market. There is also hopefully going to be an Interactive DVD with the music video for "matter wasted" and perhaps "fin". the DVD will also include a few special features, including stills of the video shoots, a photo and video gallery of shots taken from the Recording and Editing process. the DVD will be available for sale as a supplement to the CD, or individually.