Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt by Mildred Klaus.
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt makes music that is right for our time. Challenging. Difficult. Powerful. Brilliant. That kinda thing.
Plague covers the planet. Cities shut down. Rioters loot and burn. Welcome to the New Normal. Put on your mask and shop this way.
There’s gotta be a way out. Maybe Marquardt’s music offers one?
I was supposed to talk with Marquardt sometime in June. Or was it July? The days merge. One day is much the same as the next—under a lockdown that gave me one hour-a-day outside (for exercise) and one trip (only if really, really, really necessary) to the store for essentials. Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt could be one of those essentials. He’s not to everyone’s taste I know but his music is important and relevant. Especially today.
We should have spoken together in June or July but then his nephew was shot dead on the streets. An horrific tragedy. What can you say? I sent condolences. Waited. Waited. Didn’t know what else to do. Looked back on what I’d once written:
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt is an American musician who lives in Germany. He has been making music since he was six-years-old. He started by writing songs or “texts” and “melodies” as he describes it before taking an interest in House Music in his teens. Sean began DJing, before moving from Chicago to Berlin, where he started singing and playing guitar with metal bands. It was in Europe that he began his interest in electronic music.
With a desire to balance both his love of electronic with metal, Sean produced drone, ambient and noise recordings, developing his own distinct form of “Accidental Guitar Music.”
“Accidental Guitar” is a holistic and grounded concept that includes three main aspects. The first of these is the creation of sounds and sound worlds by combining the guitar with distortion effects – a type of “routing” or “mapping” technique where the musician does not lose himself, however, but instead works in a deliberate manner with the tools available to him. The second dimension of “Accidental Guitar” is improvisation—an approach that Cooper Marquardt has chosen, systematically rejecting predetermined choreographies and all forms of rehearsal or planning. This applies not only to live performances, but also when making recordings in his studio. Finally, the third dimension to this concept is the specific situation that the musician encounters when playing: the atmosphere and setting, the persons, conditions and moods present in the space in question lead to a contextualisation of his music.
Sean has released over 500 recordings as solo artist, collaborative artist, or just playing on someone else’s tracks. He has performed across the world. Gigged. Toured. Played the festivals. When I approached him before to ask some Q&A he preferred to “create [an] article without using the question and answers normal modus of operation.”
Yeah, I know.
He wrote and said he wanted to do the same again and I should contact a guy called Nicholus. It’s a bit like speaking through an agent, or maybe a medium, or just selling myself to do PR—which ain’t what my job entails. If you push to be interviewed then you should be available to be interviewed—it’s a business—otherwise you’re just playing games and after all this was the second time Marquardt had opted out.
Who knows? Maybe it’s me? I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t even talk to me…and I promised to write myself every week too…
Photograph by Bert Loewenherz.
Moving swiftly along.
I wrote to Nicholus Parrott, head of Completely Gone Recordings. His name reminded me of a cool kid I once sat next to at school called “Freddie Parrott-Face” cause he was called Freddie Parrot and looked like one. He also had a stutter like the comic Freddie “Parrot Face” Davies whose best line was “I’m sick, sick, sick up to here.” No one in America will know this guy but believe me, he gave a gem of a performance alongside Oliver Reed and Jerry Lewis in Funny Bones. Check it out.
Parrott was cool. Maybe he’s Marquardt? Who knows? He wrote back to my questions ‘cause he had a label and an album to sell.
Still who I really wanted to talk to was Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt, but he wasn’t playing game. Well, he was ‘cause he edited what Parrot wrote. I got two emails. Parrot’s and the one Marquardt approved.
Here’s the approved version of Parrott’s interview:
Can you tell me about Sean’s new album?
Nicholus Parrott: Yes. Of course. It’s called Lover Soap Is Kind To Hands, and it was released back in late-May, of this year, on my label, Completely Gone Recordings. It’s very good. I love it. It’s a compendium of some of his best and personal favourites from 2006 ‘til now. Some of it’s from his gigs, particularly those in and around Berlin.
Two of his other projects are on here, Drone Messiah and MoreBlackThanGod. Some nice guests appear on here, Cousin Silas, Kasi Pani K, Udo Lindemann and Claire Furchick Pannell. They’ve contributed guitars, drums and electronics to the mix. And, I mastered it at my studio, in California.
What was the inspiration for it?
NP: The album was mainly inspired by world events, difficult times, and Sean’s circle of friends.
Sean’s new album ‘Lover Soap Is Kind To Hands.’ Photograph by Kai Heimberg.
How would you describe Sean’s music?
NP: He performs everything using the “Accidental Guitar Method”, which he invented.
He is very free-form with his music, keeping things open-ended and interesting. His recordings are gritty, mysterious and industrial. Sean has published hundreds of albums. He’s collaborated with tons of people and has appeared on a multitude of compilations that were released by so many different labels, it can be a challenge to track down every session Sean’s done.Besides Drone Messiah and MoreBlackThanGod, he also performs as Hildeguard, Light Speed Vortex, MC Plane Of Existence, PNYX, The Return Of The Think Thing and Tradishion, among others. They are all different facets of his creative spirit.
Beyond that, he leads The S&M Accidental Orchestra, which combines a mixture of live music and performance art. He works closely with his friend Emiliano Pietrini on their excellent label, Hortus Conclusus Records.
Sean playing and conducting The S&M Orchestra, August 2019.
Will Sean be touring?
NP: He has an upcoming performance on the 25th of August, 2020, at Acud Macht Neu, in Berlin. Aside from that, no. Sean says touring is over, for now. There’s no real way of telling how long the current pandemic is going to last… So, he isn’t playing halls, or clubs the way he did before. Sean actually scheduled a tour, which would’ve had him performing with his orchestra, in places like London, Italy and Croatia. But, COVID-19 halted that plan, before it came to fruition.
As a result of the current lockdown closures of live venues, Sean has, instead, been playing secret gigs, outdoors and in parks, all around Europe. You know, where it’s a bit more practical for smaller, more intimate audiences to gather, while still keeping a respectable distance from one other. During this time, he’s started work on producing films, acting and modeling,
Can you tell me about your record label and what kind of artists?
NP: Thanks for asking. I operate Completely Gone Recordings. It’s both a label and studio in Southern California. I’ve worked with it for 32-years, with it’s formation in 1988 being a cassette tape label, known as Hot Damn! Tapes.
That early version of the label focused on bands I was in, like Rusty-Like and Tambourine Halo, other, local experimental acts, and my own project Kosmik Leprechaun.
In 2006, I stopped releasing cassettes in favor of digital downloads and changed the labels’ name to Completely Gone Recordings. That’s when I began releasing music by musicians around the world, which was refreshing.
Since then, CGR has published material by: Anthony Osborne, Army Of 2600, Ars Sonor, Deceased Squirrel On The Phone, Devin Sarno, experiMENTALien, Globoscuro, Hal McGee, Jack Hertz, Jaime Munárriz, Lien Vøid, Lisa Bella Donna, Matij, Nimbostrata, nordBeck, N.Strahl.N, Revolution Freewill, Secant Prime, Siegmar Fricke, Super Thirty-One, Sylphides, Thomas Park, V, WHΛLTHISИEY, Wilfried Hanrath and Yaka╧anima, among many, many others.
These projects are all genre-bending, to a degree. A lot of the sounds that Completely Gone Recordings publishes are untested and risky, in terms of mainstream appeal.
Aside from that, we’ve got your electronic sounds, experimental noises, cinematic scores, free jazz, post-rock and avant garde classicism right here.
CGR also works in tandem with other, kindred labels, such as: God Hates God Records and Fuck Labels // Fuck Mastering (Belgium), as well as our sister-label Takkeherrie Recordings (Netherlands).& The S&M Accidental Orchestra Berlin.
On 25 August 2020 ACUD MACHT NEU Berlin Drone Drama
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt & The S&M Accidental Orchestra Berlin 3.0
MUSIC FOR THE DEAD
Participating Artists:
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt - conductor, concept, curator & accidental guitar
Wilfried Hanrath - bass, film, audio recording & editing
Manuel Bonik - acoustic guitar & voice
Son Samin - voice & performance
Helli Winkler - cello & electronics
Nadja Haas - performance
Taylor Rose - live painting & performance
Lena Wenta /aka Zustand D. (clarinet & electronics)
Yozy Zhang Garvey - saxophone bass, performance, live Polaroid experience , documentation
Mildred Klaus - photography
Yulya Valuy -documentation
Cecelia Chapman- film screening of Drone Drama (Music For The Dead) taken from the album (Music For The Dead) composed by Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt, filmed & edited by Cecelia Chapman 2016 - 2017
Site-Specific Music, Film Sceening & Performance.
Buy ‘Lover Soap Is Kind To Hands’ here
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The ‘Accidental Guitar Music’ of Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt
‘For Chelsea Manning’: New album release from Elizabeth Veldon & Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt