discography

Biography:

Mandala Of The Octave manifested as a production company in Vancouver in late '97. Based out of the Hush record shop, M.O.T.O networked to bring together several intimate afterhour events, the first of which featured Sean Brawley & Renee with M.O.T.O members Jon, Chris Raymond, and Walter Wall. (Any who attended will also remember the fire breather).

Soon after Khristopher established mandalastudios at 980 Main st, and began a series of afterhours events. During this time Jon travelled to San Fran, Walter returned to the U.K., Chris Raymond went underground and Khristopher began to produce the first mandalasounds cds. As a musician, Khristopher realized the potential of self sampling and spent the last months of autumn recording beats & breaks from his drum kit in the studio. As an artist he realized that his deviation from the standard formats of house/tech/dnb etc. would sooner or later be picked up on by others who were advancing into new sounds, and that it was a matter of creativity & not merely expensive gear that would allow what seemed like static genres of sequence based music to evolve.

During the winter of '99 he recorded a series of studio tracks from these beats and began working on live sets, composed of resampled and reworked bits of the studio material. Mandalastudios relocated to Toronto, and Khristopher was introduced to vocalist Bridget, who had been doing some live improv gigs with percussion oriented groups & immediately a deep relationship began between them, starting with a remix project of some of Bridget's earlier material. The combination of solid and clever programming with the stark, simple beauty of Bridget's vocals has become recognizable as the M.O.T.O sound, consisting of a journey into the interplay between tech and acoustic sounds, tribal-tech house and moody earthy dnb & downtempo.

M.O.T.O gained exposure through regular airplay on Denise Benson's 'Mental Chatter' & Gerald Belanger's 'Unfortunate Sonic Casualties' both on CKLN 88.1 in Toronto, and club & radio play by dj Chocolate of Chix Dig It & CIUT 89.5, Toronto. they soon began playing shows such as the 'OM' festival in Ontario & the 'Deep Concentration Tour' in America. The uniquely live setup consisted of a drum kit, percussion & live vocals backed up wth a sequence programmed by Khristopher of samples recorded during sessions in the studio. Out of the momentum created by Khristopher and Bridget's creative play have come several vinyl and cd releases, all independently produced and mastered at mandalastudios. Recent collaborations between M.O.T.O and dj Shine from Toronto began with an appearance on Shine's "the homegrown show" on www.1groove.com. Soon after they joined up for a live to air p.a. mix during fundraiser week at CKLN and have prompted an even greater interest in live performances (both using the Yamaha su700 to write their tracks), with potential M.O.T.O vs. Shine releases upcoming.

Remixing has also become a great focus, as well as drawing samples from his own organic instruments in the studio. Presently, Khristopher is working from Mandalastudios in Toronto and is always willing to get involved with projects to keep well in touch with many aspects of his musical interests. He is also in a post-indie band called Versorecto, gigging in Montreal & Quebec.