modular sketchbook 4-18-23

I was trained in tradition, yet I stepped beyond its walls. Sound is my language, not to decorate but to liberate. Composer, performer, and listener — one fire, three sparks, inseparable.

I write and compose to uncover what is hidden: the truth buried beneath power, the dignity of the ordinary, the current of awareness that flows through all.

I belong to no authority, only to sound, to truth, to the silence from which all begins. My work is not mastery, but remembrance — a manifesto in every note, every word, every breath.

I am a composer of the 21st century: a studio artist. The studio is my forge, my battlefield, my sanctuary. Machines hum like choirs, circuits burn like torches, cables twist like roots in the earth. Tradition breaks open in this fire — the score turns to light, the instrument becomes the world itself.

To be a studio artist is to seize sound at its rawest, to sculpt electricity and breath as one, to summon the invisible power that belongs to all. Here music is not bound by walls, not enslaved by profit, not tamed by form. It is free, untouchable, unending — a living flame for the century that is ours.

Chris Frain currently lives in Boulder, CO. Idiosyncratic to a fault, his music sits in the uncomfortable gaps between ProgRock, Krautrock, Radiophonic, IDM, and ambient subgenres of Electronica, with a bit of early '80s New Wave thrown in occasionally for good measure.

UltraVoog Studios

EXTREME Productions

   I suppose I have been gone for quite some time. Busy reading,cleaning and dealing with a ton of cleaning and remodeling. Will hopefully be back to recording here soon!

I'm a lab-rat. gear-head. Composer of sonic explorations. Seeker of tone and frequency. Patcher of modules. Twiddler of knobs. Bender of strings. Programmer of sequences. Lover of all things that oscillate, resonate and reverberate.

My main instrument is a Eurorack Modular synthesizer comprised of approximately 70 modules. My favourites include modules from Frap Tools Instruō, Intellijel, and Xaoc Devices. I use a 16-channel Line converter from nw2s to get modular signals into my DAW.
My main polysynths are an UDO Super6 and a Sequential Prophet Rev2.
Production tools are Bitwig with an Ableton Push 2, with two Universal Audio and Focusrite AD converters; and plugins from GForce/Oberheim, Waldorf, UAD, Valhalla DSP, Plugin Alliance, Eventide, Softube, and Roland.
I also compose with electric guitars and basses, Toontrack Superior Drummer, and various Brazilian samba percussion.

modular sketchbook 4-18-23

BLogic