Chris Douglas, embodied at various times as O.S.T., Rook
Vallard(e) and Dalglish on imprints ranging from Plug Research to Diskono,
Worm Interface and Emanate, works in sound parameters lying outside established
electronic and dance music paradigms - the emasculated noisepunk of laptop
glitch, the cleanroom-stale micro patterns of tech-house and minimal techno
- to uncover the uncomfortable, the confrontation. Douglas left San Francisco
after years in boarding school, at the age of sixteen for Detroit and then
New York to find creative freedom outside the
classical piano and keyboard lessons of his childhood - only to return to
San Francisco after pleasantly crossing paths with Richie Hawtin and Mad
Mike of fabled UR Records. As O.S.T. became known for a challenging, quixotic,unique
electronic style, Douglas began remixing and appearing on compilations. The
Rook Valard album "Systematic
Desensitization" on Phthalo in 1998 originally recorded for LA label
Plug Research in 1995 and "Deflect" as O.S.T. a year later brought
Douglas into the spotlight. Douglas felt the room O.S.T.'s technically proficient
experimentalism needed to grow required the development of a new label, and
launched Qlipothic.
Still based in San Francisco, Douglas envisions Qlipothic to be a boundless
expanse for artists bound by convention, for people like himself who have
worked in and around the music industry in search of an open environment
only to find it's absence.
> www.qlipothic.net